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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IP 


A  MEMORY  OF 

ROSWELL  SMITH 


BORN  MARCH   30,  1829 
DIED  APRIL  19,  1892 


PRIVATELY  PRINTED 


z 

2)  tp'^i  L^  ^ 


THIS  TRIBUTE  HAS  BEEN  PREPARED 

AT   THE    SUGGESTION    OF  THE    WIFE  AND    DAUGHTER 

OF  ROSWELL  SMITH   BY   HIS  FRIEND 

GEORGE  W.  CABLE 


125?^  :1:^ 


A  MEMORY  OF   ROSWELL   SMITH 


-^^g^^^HEN  those  we  love  die,  even  after 
5^\V/"^  we  may  have  attained  to  resignation 
i  Vt  rf)  and  risen  to  meet  again  the  duties 
"■"^SS^^^  and  endearments  that  remain  to  us 


in  our  visible  world,  there  linger  within  our  hearts 
a  craving  and  an  unrepose  until  our  eulogies 
have  supplied — so  far  as  mere  words  can — full 
definition  and  appraisement  of  our  loss,  and  justi- 
fied our  love  and  sorrow. 

Those  whose  values  have  been  large  in  civil 
affairs  have  sometimes  been  finest,  best,  in  rela- 
tions of  which  the  civic  world  can  say  but  little. 
Not  any  one  voice  or  semichorus  from  any  one 
direction  can  or  should  satisfy  the  ear  of  those 
who  mourn  them  most.  The  total  dues  of  their 
praise  can  issue  only  from  the  full  chords  of  all 
relationships.     Such  was  he  to  whose  memory 


Roswell  Smith 

are  offered  these  pages  gathered  from  the  tributes 
of  many  friends  and  lovers. 

Roswell  Smith  was  born  on  the  thirtieth  of 
March,  1829.  His  birthplace,  the  small  town 
of  Lebanon,  in  southeastern  Connecticut,  is  situ- 
ated in  a  thickly  settled  region  of  great  natural 
beauty.  The  clear,  rocky  streams  of  the  Yantic, 
the  Thames,  and  lesser  waters,  hurrying  among 
its  green,  stone-walled  hills,  slender  woods  and 
fence-rows  and  flowery  meadows,  yield  abundant 
mill-power  to  a  strong-armed,  strong-minded 
population  habituated  from  long-gone  genera- 
tions to  give  their  best  energies,  in  material  as 
well  as  in  intangible  things,  to  the  development 
of  their  secondary  and  higher  values.  North- 
ward and  southward  from  it,  an  easy  hour's  drive 
either  way,  shine  by  summer  day  and  winter 
night  the  countless  factory  windows  of  Willi- 
mantic  and  Norwich. 

In  Lebanon,  among  other  venerated  homes, 
stands  the  house  of  that  Trumbull  family  so 
notedly  related  —  with  Washington's  "Brother 
Jonathan"  at  its  head  —  to  so  much  that  was 
good  and  best  in  the  State's  and  the  nation's 
Revolutionary  and  later  politics  and  art;  and  in 
this  home,  his  father  having  acquired  it,  Roswell 


Roswell  Smith 

Smith  passed  his  boyhood.  His  father  was  a 
man  of  strong  integrity,  his  mother  quietly  faith- 
ful to  every  virtue  of  her  sphere.  They  held  by 
long  inheritance,  and  even  with  something  of 
their  ancestors'  rigid  scrupulosity  and  literal  faith, 
the  Puritan  habit  of  mind.  Industry  of  hand 
and  of  mind ;  fidelity ;  rigorous  justice  in  all  re- 
lations ;  prudence  of  purse  and  of  word — with, 
possibly,  an  implied  mistrust  of  poetic  impulses 
and  an  approbation  of  emotional  reticence;  moral 
courage  and  indignation ;  a  reverence  for  the 
Bible  as  the  only  and  perfect  word  of  God ;  the 
common-school  education  of  the  day  :  these  they 
sought  to  bestow  upon  their  son  as  the  true  and 
sufficient  equipment  with  which  to  take  his  place 
in  the  world  of  human  affairs. 

Such  was  the  mold  on  its  various  sides  —  na- 
ture, society,  household,  and  moral  training — in 
which  his  life  took  its  early  form  and  features. 
Those  whose  first  acquaintance  with  him  began 
after  he  had  entered  manhood  have  to  confess  it 
equally  difficult  to  think  of  him  either  as  a  bois- 
terous, prankish  boy  or  as  a  sad  or  soft-mannered 
lad  given  to  books  and  reverie.  Cheerful,  dig- 
nified, and  sententious  he  undoubtedly  was,  and 
that  incessant  diligence  of  mind  and  purpose  so 


Roswell  Smith 

prominent  in  his  strong,  kind,  adult  life  must 
have  shown  itself  early,  and  made  mere  play  the 
slender,  handsome  youth's  least  interesting  and 
most  difficult  work.  Certainly  such  was  the  la- 
ment of  his  nearest  friends  concerning  him  when 
in  later  years  a  stronger  capability  for  pure  diver- 
sion might  have  prolonged  his  days  and  his  use- 
fulness. Whether  it  came  by  birth,  environment, 
training,  or  all,  to  plan  work  was  his  true  play. 
He  began  each  day  with  plans  as  spontaneously 
and  unlaboriously  as  birds  begin  it  with  songs. 
He  was  not  incapable  of  momentary  desponden- 
cies, but  they  were  never  narrowed  to  mere  self- 
concern  ;  he  seemed  scarcely  to  know  at  all  the 
cares  of  this  world.  But  that  divine  thing,  the 
care  of  this  world,  was  ever  on  his  ardent  heart; 
and  this  care,  with  the  redundant  fertility  of  the 
plans  that  were  forever  springing  from  it,  gave, 
or  gives  now,  certainly,  fine  and  ample  inter- 
pretation to  what,  in  his  youth,  seemed  to  his 
solicitous  father  first  a  premature  restlessness,  and 
then  a  tardy  vacillation,  in  the  son's  choice  of  a 
calling. 

It  is  but  just  to  say  that  his  going  into  com- 
mercial employment  when  scant  fourteen,  serv- 
ing "a  brief  apprenticeship  with  the  publishers  ot 


Ro swell  Smith 

the  school-books  of  his  uncle  Roswell  C.  Smith, 
in  New  York,"  was  no  choice  of  his.  This  was 
the  only  time  in  his  life  that  he  was  ever  an 
employee.  It  was  against  his  nature  so  to  be. 
Many  a  day  of  his  early  manhood  this  lack  — 
this  noble  deficiency,  if  we  may  so  call  it — cost 
him  dear,  yet  served  him  well ;  and  he  who  knew 
so  well  how  to  be  generously  just  and  wisely 
kind  to  employees  of  every  rank,  professional, 
commercial,  industrial,  domestic,  could  fairly 
boast  through  all  his  life  with  the  amplest  range 
of  significance,  standing  in  the  world's  market- 
place, "  No  man  hath  hired  me."  He  was  a 
maste''  workman  born,  and  seems  to  have  felt 
it  when,  at  seventeen,  he  pleaded  for  a  better 
education,  and  turned  back  again  by  eager  pref- 
erence to  studies  and  school,  "taking  up  and 
finishing  the  English  course  in  Brown  Univer- 
sity." Here  was  no  uncertainty  of  will,  but  a 
swift  widening  of  his  young  grasp  upon  life  and 
the  world's  affairs. 

With  a  ruling  impulse  not  only  to  conceive 
and  to  carry  out  large  designs,  but  to  view  and  to 
do  all  things  largely,  Roswell  Smith  had  also 
in  strong  degree  the  knowledge  of  how  to  wait 
and  the   courage   to  change   his  course.     His 

5 


Roswell  Smith 

waiting  was  observant,  purposeful,  diligent, 
never  supine  ;  and  his  turning  aside  from  a 
mistaken  path  was  invariably  prompt  and  with- 
out a  note  of  chagrin.  His  changes  of  direction 
were  not  changes  of  purpose.  From  the  uni- 
versity in  Providence  he  went  to  Hartford  and 
studied  law.  Here  and  thus  early  he  began  to 
show  the  deep  interest  and  to  take  the  active 
practical  part  in  distinctly  religious  work  and  af- 
fairs which  were  ever  afterward  a  part  of  his  life. 
Here  lived  his  uncle  Roswell  C.  Smith,  within 
whose  social  and  household  circles  he  came 
into  range  of  some  especially  refining  and  in- 
spiring influences,  chief  among  them  the  com- 
panionship ot  his  uncle's  daughter,  his  beloved 
"  sister-cousin,"  as  he  always  regarded  her.  In 
the  company  of  his  uncle  he  was  brought  for 
the  second  time  into  close  contact  with  the  idea 
of  making  and  publishing  books,  and  seems  to 
have  consciously  caught  somewhat  of  its  in- 
fluence. 

In  Hartford   lived  also  some  of  the  distin 
guished  Ellsworth  family,  and  among  them,  also, 
he  made  acquaintances  and  one  or  two  positive 
friendships,  which  presently  were  to  have  a  con- 
trolling effect  upon  the  current  of  his  life.    Ex- 

6 


Roswell  Smith 

Governor  Ellsworth  and  his  household  were  here, 
and  his  brother  Henry  L.  Ellsworth,  the  first 
United  States  Commissioner  of  Patents,  had 
gone  into  the  West,  entered  large  tracts  of 
Government  land  in  Illinois,  and  in  Lafayette, 
Indiana,  had  set  up,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
times,  a  law-  and  land-office.  Here  his  business 
soon  developed  the  need  of  an  assistant,  and 
through  the  medium  of  one  or  two  ot  the  kin- 
dred  still  resident  in  Hartford  the  place  was 
offered  to  Roswell  Smith. 

The  young  law-student  promptly  accepted 
it.  To  him  it  is  altogether  likely  this  was  no 
departure  from  an  appointed  course.  With 
all  his  planning  he  never  overplanned  —  never 
planned  too  elaborately  nor  too  fast.  He  be- 
lieved in  the  coming  greatness  of  our  country ; 
he  felt  the  movings  of  his  own  still  unperfected 
powers;  and  he  was  full  of  that  strong  common 
sense  which  seizes  unforeseen  occasion  as  it 
hurries  by,  and  distinguishes  between  the  false 
and  the  real  opportunity  under  all  their  dis- 
guises. He  could  act  as  quickly  as  he  could 
wait  patiently. 

His  purposes,  never  hard  and  fixed,  always 
had  a  greatness  which  spanned  the  waves  ot 


Roswell  Smith 

impatience  with  an  even  keel.  His  designs, 
even  his  yearnings, —  and  his  yearnings  were  not 
tew, —  took  ever  calmly  into  account  the  whole 
wide  current  of  universal  interests ;  the  world, 
to  him,  was  never  less  than  round,  and  yet  never 
had  an  unseen  side.  He  "waited  God's  leisure," 
and  matched  it  with  his  own  alacrity.  To  be  out 
of  partnership  with  God  in  time  seemed  to  him 
as  idle  and  as  evil  as  to  be  so  in  purpose.  Time- 
liness —  the  divine  moment  —  was  as  much 
to  his  mind  as  the  divine  direction.  He  will 
always  be  remembered  as  a  man  of  enterprise ; 
and  yet  the  only  "when"  of  his  profoundest 
choice  concerning  any  most  cherished  project 
or  undesired  happening,  was  Thomas  Jefferson's 
solemn  "  When  in  the  course  of  human  events 
it  becomes  necessary."  Looking  back  on  sixty 
years  of  life,  he  was  able,  one  birthday  night,  to 
say,  "  I  never  ran  away  from  a  duty,  and  I 
never  ran  after  one." 

If  it  were  the  purpose  of  these  pages  to  lay 
main  stress  on  what  Roswell  Smith  did  or  what 
befell  him,  we  might  not  so  early  begin  thus  to 
linger  by  the  way  while  the  narrative  waits; 
but  to  those  for  whom  this  is  written,  what  he 
was  must  ever  be  most  of  all.      He   "  never 

8 


Roswell  Smith 

ran  after  a  duty."  And  so,  with  all  his  strength 
of  will,  his  energy  of  purpose,  and  his  fertil- 
ity of  suggestion  in  every  direction,  he  never 
showed  the  shadow  of  a  fanatical  or  oppressive 
tendency.  He  loved  to  direct  and  govern;  he 
probably  never  got  near  enough  to  anyone,  how- 
ever high  or  low  of  station,  to  call  him  friend, 
without  planning  for  him ;  but  the  directing 
and  governing  he  loved  were  never  built  on  the 
reduction  of  liberty  anywhere,  but  always  on 
liberty  conveyed  or  enlarged.  Another's  respon- 
sibility was  distinctly  more  to  him  than  his  own 
wealth ;  his  very  suggestions  ceased  wherever 
their  utterance  could  in  the  least  degree  re- 
semble interference,  and  his  ability  to  let  those 
to  whom  he  had  delegated  any  power  or  office 
win  successes,  and  even  make  failures  costly  to 
him,  while  he  looked  on  in  silence,  seemed 
almost  a  separate  talent.  He  never  forgot  that 
responsibility  and  liberty  make,  together,  the 
vital  breath  of  all  efficient  service. 

It  was  natural  that  such  a  mind  should  be 
deeply  religious.  It  could  not  easily  suppose 
an  unplanned  and  automatic  universe ;  nor  a 
revelation  of  its  Creator's  will  finished  in  past 
ages   and  totally  committed  and  confined  to 


Roswell  Smith 

writing  and  print;  nor  a  Providence  either 
unsolicitous  for,  or  wholly  undeputized  to,  the 
children  of  its  creation.  The  sacred  Scriptures, 
daily  in  his  hand,  were  to  him  a  treasury  not  so 
much  of  promises  as  of  eternal  principles ;  their 
precepts  were  prophecy  enough  for  him. 

One  day,  in  Indiana,  traveling  on  horseback 
in  company  with  a  stranger  who,  he  had  just 
been  told,  was  a  hot-tempered  skeptic,  he  took 
pains,  by  quoting  the  Bible,  to  draw  from  him  a 
fierce  assertion  of  total  disbelief  of  the  whole 
book  —  "  every  word  of  it." 

"  But  that  is  not  really  so,"  he  persisted ;  "  you 
actually  do  believe  a  great  deal  of  it." 

The  stranger  challenged  him  fiercely  to  repeat 
anything  whatever  from  Scripture  which  he,  the 
stranger,  would  admit  to  be  true. 

"  Well,"  was  the  reply,  "don't  you  believe  'a 
soft  answer  turneth  away  wrath' '?  " 

The  man,  with  restored  good  nature,  said  he 
did,  and  his  companion  closed  the  discussion 
with  the  advice,  "  Search  the  Scriptures  for  what 
you  can't  deny,  and  keep  its  commandments 
when  you  can't  honestly  break  them." 

When  Roswell  Smith,  years  afterward,  visited 
the  same  region  again,  a  man  prominent  in  the 

lO 


Roswell  Smith 

church  and  community  for  piety  and  good 
works  said  to  him,  "  I  am  the  man  whom  you 
once  reminded  that  the  Bible  is  good  for  what 
we  already  believe  in  it." 

In  Roswell  Smith's  belief — at  least  in  the 
assumption  of  his  daily  life,  whether  he  ever  so 
formulated  the  belief  or  not  —  divine  revelation 
was  continuous  and  familiar.  He  read,  as  it 
seemed  to  him,  on  the  ever-turning  pages  of 
his  own  life's  constant  happenings,  God's  daily 
will  and  plan  concerning  his  very  self;  and 
whether  on  the  page  of  Scripture  or  on  that  of 
daily  incident,  his  eye  was  ever  in  search  not  of 
God's  permissions,  but  commissions.  Baffled 
in  any  project,  his  cheerful,  quick  interpretation 
was  sure  to  be,  "  The  Lord  did  not  want  it  done 
that  way." 

It  is  somewhat  strange  that  there  should  be 
so  little  to  recount  of  the  social  life  of  one  so 
full  of  human  feeling.  But  we  know  how  often 
men  appointed  by  nature  to  wide  public  use- 
fulness show  but  a  moderate  zeal  for  private 
society,  or  are  tardy  even  in  the  domestic  im- 
pulses. For  Roswell  Smith  the  pleasures  of 
mere  social  acquaintanceships  and  activities 
were  not  deep  enough  to  satisfy,  even  in  young 

II 


Roswell  Smith 

manhood,  his  kindly,  strenuous  temperament, 
his  overflowing  fullness  of  beneficent  purpose. 
He  was  very  soon  too  busy  seeking  the  world's 
good,  to  seek,  at  all  busily,  its  company.  And 
this,  especially  in  his  earlier  Indiana  days,  a 
rather  rude  fraction  of  the  world  near  about 
him  could  not  quite  forgive. 

But  of  home,  household,  and  friends  he  was  a 
true  and  intense  lover.  He  married  before  he 
was  twenty-three.  In  this  alliance  there  is  yet 
another  hint  of  that  largeness  with  which  the 
lines  of  his  opening  life  were  being  projected. 
We  have  seen  how,  from  boyhood,  he  had  been 
related  to  one  of  the  world's  most  far-reaching 
methods  of  enlightenment,  and  had  acquired 
by  contact,  if  not  by  inheritance,  the  ruling  de- 
sire to  measure  the  field  of  his  usefulness  by  no 
narrower  bound  than  the  whole  province  of  the 
printing-press  and  its  marvelous  adjuncts.  His 
uncle  was  the  author,  his  father  the  seller,  of 
a  group  of  school-books,  "  Smith's  Grammar  " 
among  them,  which  in  that  day  were  found  in 
the  hands  .of  a  larger  number  of  teachers  and 
school-children  than  was  any  similar  work  save 
only  the  world-renowned  Webster's  spelling- 
book.     His  removal  to   Indiana  brought  him 


12 


RosweU  Smith 

under  the  roof,  as  a  member  of  the  household, 
of  Commissioner  Ellswordi,  the  first  head  of  that 
great  national  office  whose  stimulating  rewards 
have  done  so  much  to  make  Americans  the 
most  inventive  nation  in  the  world.  From 
this  household  death  had  removed  the  wife 
and  mother,  and  the  daughter  was  absent  in 
the  East  when  RosweU  Smith  became  one  of 
its  number.  It  was  some  months  before  the 
daughter  returned.  When  she  did  so,  expecting 
to  be  met  at  the  station  by  her  father,  in  his 
stead  she  saw  awaiting  her  the  young  stranger, 
tall,  slender,  forceful,  and  exceptionally  hand- 
some, so  well  known  to  her  by  report,  but 
hitherto  unconsidered  and  unseen.  Realizing 
that  they  were  to  be  almost  the  sole  inmates 
of  one  small  house  together,  the  question  must 
have  been  uppermost  in  the  mind  of  each,  what 
degree  and  phase  of  intimate  relation  they  would 
find  best  and  most  tolerable.  But  so  looking 
each  on  each,  in  the  same  moment, —  as  many 
a  time,  in  after  years,  they  reverently  confessed 
to  each  other, —  the  word  came  to  her  heart, 
"  Yonder  stands  my  destiny,"  and  to  his,  "  I  am 
for  that  maiden  and  she  for  me."  They  came 
at  once,  at  the  family  board,  by  the  fireside, 

'13 


Roswell  Smith 

under  the  summer  vine  or  evening  lamp,   in 
readings  together,  in  musings  side  by  side,  daily 
and  hourly,  into  congenial  companionship  sur- 
rounded by  a  state  of  society  that  could  offer 
very  little  such  to  either  of  them ;  and  it  was 
with  a  significance  as  happy  as  the  event  was 
natural  that  in  his  choice   of  a  wife  his  love 
fixed  here   upon  Annie,  granddaughter  of  the 
illustrious  Oliver  Ellsworth,  Chief  Justice  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  the  young  girl 
by  whose  hand   that  famous  first  electro-tele- 
graphic message  was  sent,  between  Baltimore 
and  Washington,  across  the   inventor  Morse's 
wire,   "What   hath   God   wrought  I "      In   her 
Roswell  Smith  found  a  spirit  ever  wifely,  sym- 
pathetic, and  supremely  faith-giving  and  loyal. 
Prompt  and  highly  trained  in  all  the  real  duties 
of  the  social  world,  the  pleasures  of  her  fullest 
choice  were  yet,  as  his  were,  those  gentler  ones 
that  are  found  nearest  the  hearthstone.   The  fire- 
side companionship  with  which  their  common 
life  began  was  still  very  much  the  largest  part 
of  it  when  his  death  brought  it  to  an  earthly 
end ;  and  in  forty  wedded  years,  says  the  one 
best  able  to  know,  he  never  spoke  an  unkind 
word  to  the  partner  of  his  life. 

14 


RosweU  Smith 

Their  early  pathway  led  through  many  sharp 
vicissitudes.  They  trod  upon  the  stones  and 
thorns  of  poverty.  The  world  —  fortunate  if 
not  one's  kindred,  too  —  charges  (maybe  it 
is  best  it  should)  a  heavy  entrance-fee  to  an 
exalted  spirit  rich  in  self-reliance  but  poor  in 
material  resources.  The  people  among  whom 
the  young  pair  chose,  or  found,  their  lot  were 
more  than  willing  to  let  the  husband  feel,  even 
professionally  and  pecuniarily,  that  if  they  were 
not  of  his  kind  it  was  at  least  partly  his  misfor- 
tune. Neither  law  nor  land  business  brought 
him  more  than  the  most  meager  returns.  When 
they  found  it  best  to  set  up  their  own  home,  the  . 
total  cost  of  the  house  they  built  was  five  hun- 
dred dollars.  Here  children  were  born  to  them: 
children  that  brought  them  joy  for  a  time  and 
then  died,  only  one,  a  daughter,  surviving.  The 
husband's  health  gave  way ;  one  lung  was  said 
to  be  quite  gone;  the  wife,  too,  was  feeble,  and, 
turning  all  his  means  into  a  few  hundred  dol- 
lars, he  started  with  the  mother  and  child  for 
San  Antonio,  Texas,  the  refuge  of  consump- 
tives. At  New  Orleans,  waiting  for  a  promised 
remittance  from  his  father,  he  became  absolutely 
penniless.     But  concealing  his  distress  from  his 

IS 


Roswell  Smith 

delicate  wife,  and  walking  in  the  streets  the  bet- 
ter to  keep  it  to  himself,  he  chanced  upon  two 
men  whom  he  had  slightly  known  in  Indiana, 
who  were  bound,  as  he  was,  for  the  Rio  Grande, 
and  who,  having  more  money  on  their  persons 
than  they  thought  it  safe  to  carry,  without  know- 
ing anything  of  his  strait,  begged  him  to  take 
care  of  it.  He  told  them,  thereupon,  his  whole 
case,  and  arranged  with  them  to  be  the  bor- 
rower instead  of  custodian  of  their  money,  and 
so  reached  his  destination. 

The  air  of  San  Antonio  proved  unfavorable ; 
but  when  he  went  upon  a  ranch  some  distance 
further  north,  and  began  in  that  wild  region 
to  live  entirely  out  of  doors,  his  health  and 
vigor,  that  had  seemed  wholly  lost,  completely 
returned,  and  he  presently  found  his  life  threat- 
ened not  subtly,  by  disease,  but  wordily,  by 
men  from  whom  he  would  not  conceal  that  he 
favored  the  abolition  of  slavery. 

His  affairs  by  and  by  called  him  back  to  La- 
fayette, and  he  resumed  business  there  under 
new  conditions  that  made  marked  changes  in 
his  fortunes.  He  only  partly  resumed  the 
profession  of  the  law,  acting  as  counselor,  but 
never  again  pleading  in  court.     The  death  of 

i6 


Roswell  Smith 

his  wife's  father  filled  his  hands  with  new  inter- 
ests both  hers  and  his.  Some  of  the  lands  still 
retained  turned  out,  or  had  turned  out  already 
before  falling  to  their  inheritance,  to  be  rich  in 
coal.  Certain  family  matters  required  him  to 
revisit  the  East,  and  while  there  he  quite  ac- 
cidentally became  most  pleasantly  acquainted 
with  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland  and  his  family.  Re- 
turning to  the  West,  the  burden  of  his  swiftly 
growing  affairs  was  again  bearing  seriously  upon 
him — for  he  had  not  only  intricate  and  perplex- 
ing financial  problems  to  meet,  but  the  active 
opposition  of  strong  and  hostile  wills  to  over- 
come— when,  on  a  visit  to  Cincinnati  compelled 
by  business,  he  fell  ill  again,  this  time  of  typhoid 
fever,  and  was  soon  to  all  appearances  nearer 
than  ever  to  the  brink  of  the  grave.  But  just 
at  that  brink  the  path  of  life  turned  sharply  and 
led  into  wider  fields;  for  the  noted  physician 
who  attended  him  assured  him  he  could  not 
live  in  the  climate  of  the  Ohio  Valley,  and  ex- 
acted from  him  a  solemn  pledge,  while  his  re- 
covery was  yet  in  doubt,  that  if  his  life  was 
spared  he  would  leave  that  region  and  settle 
permanently  in  the  East. 

This  promise,  as  soon  as  his  strength  would 

4  17 


Roswell  Smith 

allow,  he  set  about  to  fulfil.  He  made  final 
surrender  of  the  profession  of  law,  turned  his 
land  business  over  to  others,  and,  in  order  to 
a  more  complete  recuperation,  arranged  for  a 
tour  of  Europe.  This  juncture  of  his  life  is  re- 
markable. The  great  work  which  is  now  his 
monument  lay  yet  in  the  germ.  The  choicest 
wish  of  his  nature,  the  desire  to  concentrate  all 
his  powers  to  the  dissemination  of  right  ideas 
through  the  medium  of  the  printed  page,  was 
taking  the  form  of  a  definite  purpose,  but  the 
purpose  was  almost  totally  without  plan;  and 
when  in  after  life  he  looked  back  to  this  period, 
he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  been,  just  here, 
more  passively  than  ever  before  or  after,  guided 
by  what  some  of  us  call  fate,  but  he,  Providence. 
But  a  strong,  clear  purpose,  always  timely, 
patient,  and  courageous,  can  afford  to  let  the 
turn  of  events  shape  its  plans.  To  Roswell 
Smith  the  turn  of  events  was  the  very  text 
of  God's  commission.  He  tried  simply  to  read 
and  obey. 

He  was  now  in  his  fortieth  year,  a  man's 
second  majority,  and  was  not  only  commis- 
sioned, but  equipped,  accoutred.  He  had  seen 
at  close  view  the  three  great   sections  of  our 

i8 


RosweU  Smith 

vast  country,  and  been  a  sagacious  and  sympa- 
thetic student  of  their  diverse  conditions  and 
interests.  He  had  been  for  nearly  twenty  years 
a  lawyer,  had  shown  himself  a  financier  of  rare 
skill,  had  a  most  thorough  knowledge  of  men, 
both  intuitive  and  acquired,  was  as  free  from 
cynicism  as  from  credulity,  and  with  the  fresh- 
ness of  a  natural  bent  still  retained,  from  the 
days  of  his  boyhood's  three  years'  apprenticeship 
in  the  New  York  publishing-house  and  from  his 
later  contact  with  his  father  and  uncle,  a  habit- 
ual studious  scrutiny  of  the  field  and  methods 
of  the  publisher's  business.  "Even  when  we 
first  sat  together  by  my  father's  fireside,"  says 
she  who  was  then  Annie  Ellsworth,  "constant 
readers  of  the  comparatively  slender  'Harper's 
Magazine '  of  those  times,  he  always  read  and 
handled  it  with  speculative  scrutiny  as  to  how 
it  was  made  and  sent  forth,  and  how  it  might 
be  made  or  sent  forth  better."  And  the  daugh- 
ter of  their  early  married  life  says,  "  I  cannot 
remember  ever  having  seen  my  father,  even  in 
church,  take  up  an  unfamiliar  book  without,  by 
a  kind  of  only  half-conscious  instinct,  passing 
his  eye  and  hand  over  the  various  features  of  its 
workmanship,   first  the  outward,  then  the  in- 

19 


RosweU  Smith 

ward,  and  turning  last  to  the  title-page  and 
publisher's  imprint." 

Moreover,  he  was  now,  at  length,  abundantly 
able  to  put  aside  the  Franklinian  counsel  given 
him  by  his  uncle  when  he  was  starting  West, 
and  which  he  still  quoted  with  approval  thirty 
years  afterward,  "Keep  your  own  bank-account, 
if  you  have  to  borrow  money  to  do  it."  For  he 
had  gathered  a  more  than  comfortable  fortune. 
How  essential  this  was  to  the  effectiveness  of 
a  man  of  his  peculiar  sort  he  knew  full  well. 
While  always  abounding  in  a  fraternal  spirit 
that  was  ever  ready  with  the  word  of  apt  and 
kindly  counsel,  and  which  kept  the  hand  of  ma- 
terial succor  constantly  outstretched  to  others, 
his  nature  could  never  allow  him  to  be  for  a 
moment,  in  whatever  manner,  the  younger  bro- 
ther of  any  man.  Beyond  doubt  this  quality,  in 
the  years  of  his  adversity,  stood  in  the  way  of  an 
earlier  but  less  illustrious  success. 

Nevertheless,  Roswell  Smith  had  in  rare  de- 
gree tlie  gift  of  choosing  wisely  all  needed  asso- 
ciates, whether  equals  or  subordinates.  He  was 
a  man  of  energetic  instincts,  and  had  a  cordial 
belief  in  them.  Except  a  certain  fierceness  in 
his  purity,   this   was  probably  the  only  femi- 


Roswell  Smith 

nine  trait  in  his  mind  or  character.  Yet  his 
choosings  ot  co-workers  were  not  sudden  in- 
spirations. Rarely,  if  ever,  did  he  make  such 
a  choice  without  close,  even  prolonged,  study 
of  all  the  requirements  of  the  place  and  of  all 
traits  and  capacities  of  the  person;  and  yet, 
on  the  other  hand  again,  he  always  finally 
allowed  a  distinctly  controlling  value  to  his 
unreasoned  intuitions.  Indeed,  no  one  ever,  by 
whatsoever  merit  of  conduct,  persuaded  him 
—  though  he  might  visibly  wish  to  be  per- 
suaded—  to  put  those  intuitions  quite  aside. 
When,  in  1868,  he  was  contemplating  his  trip 
to  Europe,  his  purposes  for  the  future  had  so 
far  taken  form  that  he  was  revolving  the  thought 
of  buying  and  conducting,  on  his  return,  some 
Eastern  newspaper.  He  must  have  been  casting 
about  in  his  private  counsels  then  for  the  right 
allies  in  a  work  which,  whatever  its  ultimate 
form,  would  be  great  enough,  he  planning  it, 
for  the  collaboration  ot  many  minds,  and  of 
kindred,  yet  diverse,  natures;  and  an  intuition, 
however  indefinite  or  partly  conscious,  was 
most  likely  an  influence  with  him  when  he 
arranged  to  make  both  the  ocean  voyage  and 
the    Continental    tour   with   his   esteemed   but 


21 


Roswell  Smith 

not  yet  intimate  acquaintance,  Dr.  Holland. 
Each  of  them  was  to  be  accompanied  by  his 
family. 

The  Doctor  was  ten  years  the  senior.  He 
had  been,  until  a  short  time  before,  a  noted 
journalist,  having  lately  retired  from  the 
"Springfield  Republican."  His  earlier  books, 
"  Bitter-Sweet,"  "  Letters  to  the  Young,"  and 
other  strong,  high-minded,  sympathetic  pen- 
preachings  on  manners  and  conduct  in  every 
relation  of  life,  had  made  him,  in  this  country, 
one  of  the  most  widely  read  authors  then  writ- 
ing, and  had  drawn  him  to  the  public-lecture 
platform,  and  so  to  the  West.  Still  earher  in 
life  he  had  lived  in  Vicksburg,  Mississippi, 
and  thus,  like  Roswell  Smith,  had  seen  and  felt, 
as  we  may  say,  the  three  great  parts  of  our 
country  and  nation.  His  ambitions  were  large 
and  chivalric,  and  though  physically  he  had 
no  such  hold  on  life  as  his  junior,  he  had  yet 
enough  to  say  often  to  him  in  tones  of  manly 
lamenting,  "Ah,  if  I  were  only  where  you 
are  I "  We  see,  then,  how  much  there  was 
to  draw  the  two  men  together.  Both  were 
cutting  loose  from  old  moorings,  and,  with 
similar  motives,  and  in  much  the  same  direc- 


22 


Roswell  Smith 

tion,  were  silently  making  ready  for  a  new 
dedication  of  their  strength  and  fortunes  to 
higher  uses  than  before. 

"Before  we  finally  decide  this,"  said  Dr.  Hol- 
land one  day,  —  meaning  their  project  to  see 
Europe  together, —  "we  ought  to  have  one 
point  plainly  understood,  I  am  a  very  punc- 
tual man,  always  at  a  place  exactly  at  the  hour 
appointed.     I  hope  you  are  so." 

"  No,"  said  Roswell  Smith  ;  "  I  never  arrive 
at  the  hour." 

"  Then  I  do  not  think  we  had  better  travel 
together,"  replied  the  Doctor. 

"Maybe  not,"  said  his  friend;  "for  I  am  al- 
ways half  an  hour  ahead  of  time."  And  the 
decision  was  that  they  would  not  separate. 

Difficulties  unforeseen  prevented  them,  how- 
ever, from  sailing  on  the  same  steamer,  and  they 
had  to  content  themselves  with  the  agreement 
for  Dr.  Holland  and  family  to  sail  without  the 
other  group,  and  for  the  two  friends  with  their 
families  to  join  company  at  a  later  date,  fixed, 
in  Geneva,  Switzerland.  And  so  the  hour  came 
which  was  ever  afterward  to  be  stimulating  to 
the  spirit,  and  oftenest  recurrent  in  the  remi- 
niscences, of  both  men  :  an  hour  that  must  ever 

23 


Roswell  Smith 

be  notable  in  the  history  of  our  nation's  —  shall 
we  not  say  of  the  world's  *?  —  literature. 

"  I  have  often  heard  both  Dr.  Holland  and 
Roswell  Smith  allude  to  the  memorable  night 
when,  standing  upon  one  of  the  bridges  that 
span  the  rushing  Rhone  at  Geneva,  Dr.  Holland 
outlined  to  his  friend  a  project  which  he  had 
been  maturing,  of  a  monthly  magazine  devoted 
to  American  letters  and  American  art.  The 
emphasis  rested  upon  the  adjective  :  the  work 
was  to  be  done  in  America,  by  Americans,  for 
Americans ;  it  was  to  be  a  popular  educator  of 
the  highest  grade.  Roswell  Smith  promptly 
seized  upon  the  project."  So  writes  Dr.  Glad- 
den in  the  magazine  whose  world-wide  pre- 
eminence celebrates  that  hour. 

As  Dr.  Holland  at  that  time  set  forth  the 
scheme,  it  was  one  to  which  he  was  not  yet 
irrevocably  committed,  but  which  he  was  still 
weighing:  an  expansion  in  his  own  thought 
and  wish  of  a  simpler  proposition  made  to  him, 
shortly  before  sailing  for  Europe,  by  his  near 
friend  Charles  Scribner,  the  publisher  of  his 
books.  But  upon  Roswell  Smith's  so  ready 
enlistment  his  own  resolution  became  final,  and 
ere  long  the  two  friends  returned  to  America, 

24 


Roswell  Smith 

perfected  arrangements  with  Messrs.  Charles 
Scribner  and  Co.,  and  "founded  the  corpora- 
tion which  now  bears  the  name  of  The  Cen- 
tury Co.,  and  began  the  publication  of  their 
magazine." 

How  much  larger  that  constant,  yet  ever 
more  and  more  honored,  visitant  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  American  homes,  and  of  every 
clime  where  the  English  tongue  is  spoken — how 
much  larger  it  is,  and  how  much  larger  it  began 
from  its  first  day  to  be,  than  any  mere  mercan- 
tile adventure  and  phenomenal  commercial  suc- 
cess, scarce  one  of  a  thousand  knows  of  those  who 
enjoy,  directly  or  indirectly,  its  superb  yet  un- 
burdensome  beneficences.  But  from  this  time 
the  life  and  work  of  Roswell  Smith  is  so  inter- 
woven with  the  labors  and  achievements  of  those 
with  whom  he  associated  himself,  that  to  distin- 
guish exhaustively  or  exactly  what  was  his,  and 
what  theirs,  is  as  impossible  to  us  as  it  would 
have  been  distasteful  to  him.  He  joined  him- 
self to  all  co-workers  in  a  spirit  almost  as  of 
wedlock,  and  so  long  as  ends  were  achieved 
neither  he  nor  they  ever  wasted  time  to  decide 
by  any  minuteness  of  measure  in  what  degree 
each  had  furnished  the  elements  of  success. 

5  25 


RosweU  Smith 

Indeed,  so  intimate  and  constant  was  and  has 
ever  been  the  harmony  pervading  this  always 
increasing  group  of  co-laborers,  that  only  in  the 
most  initial  conception  of  any  feature  of  their 
multiform  work  could,  or  can,  anything  be  cred- 
ited to  a  single  brain  or  one  pair  of  hands. 
And  this  very  fact  must  be  credited  largely  — 
most  largely — to  him  to  whom  these  pages  are 
dedicated.  He  established  from  the  first  an 
identity  of  spirit,  a  unity  of  interest,  between  the 
editorial  and  the  counting  room  upon  the  broad 
and  sure  foundation  of  a  common  aim  pointing 
toward  the  highest  ideals,  whether  of  commerce, 
ethics,  or  art.  It  was  from  beginning  to  end  his 
own  clear,  unvarying  choice  to  make  his  com- 
mercial and  financial  management  a  well-spring 
of  faithful  and  inspiring  counsel  to  the  edi- 
torial rooms,  yet  never  to  let  it  hinder  their  ut- 
terance or  dominate  their  policy.  He  made  it 
understood  at  once  and  ever  afterward,  that  the 
editors  might  depend  with  certainty  upon  the 
counting-room  to  be  bold  in  enterprise,  firm  in 
peril,  and  faithful  in  adversity.  More  :  passing 
over  into  the  editorial  department  with  the 
cordial  freedom  and  confidence  which  he  en- 
couraged and   maintained  on  every  hand,  he 

26 


Roswell  Smith 

gave  the  whole  force  of  his  most  ardent  approval 
to  whatever  there  tended  to  make  the  whole 
world's  good,  and  nothing  less,  the  policy  of  the 
magazine.  In  the  magazine  itself,  Mr.  Gilder 
writes : 

Behind  every  successful  enterprise  one  may  be  sure 
that  there  is  somewhere  at  work,  even  if  not  always  prom- 
inently in  sight,  a  powerful  personality.  The  personal 
force — alert,  original,  full  of  initiative,  insistence,  and 
enthusiasm — which  has  been  from  the  beginning,  in  1870, 
up  to  the  past  year  or  two  of  illness,  behind  the  publishing 
corporation  now  known  as  The  Century  Co.  was  that  of 
Roswell  Smith.  Others  may  express  in  these  pages  their 
impression  of  the  man  in  the  various  phases  of  his  aspi- 
ration and  activity.  It  is,  perhaps,  only  necessary  for 
the  present  writer  to  record  here  the  grief  of  all  associated 
in  business  with  our  late  President  at  his  untimely  de- 
parture, and  to  say  a  word  regarding  especially  his  rela- 
tion to  "  The  Century  Magazine." 

We  do  believe  that  Roswell  Smith  came  nearer  realizing 
the  strictest  editorial  idea  of  what  the  publisher  and  chief 
owner  of  a  periodical  should  be  to  that  periodical  than 
has  often  been  seen  in  the  literary  and  publishing  world. 
Trusting  the  persons  chosen  to  take  editorial  charge  in  a 
manner  to  call  out  all  the  energies  and  abilities  of  those 
so  generously  confided  in,  he  spent  no  part  of  his  energy 
in  thwarting  or  diverting  their  control,  but  set  all  his 
great  strength  to  the  task  of  enthusiastically  cooperating 
with  the  plans  of  the  magazine — making  possible,  by  his 

■27 


Roswell  Smith 

appreciation,  courage,  and  loyal  and  liberal  support, 
enterprises  in  their  way  of  unprecedented  cost  and  im- 
portance. 

It  was  always  an  idea — always  the  ideal — that,  ap- 
pealing to  his  imagination,  drew  forth  his  deepest  and 
most  active  sympathies.  It  was  especially  ideas  of  use- 
fulness, of  patriotism,  of  humanity,  which  commanded  his 
most  practical  and  zealous  activities.  The  famous  War 
Series  of  "  The  Century  "  could  not  have  been  carried  on 
with  a  publisher  of  a  timid  and  time-serving  disposition. 

The  authorized  Life  of  Lincoln  was  made  available  to 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  largely  through  the  liberaUty 
and  determination  of  Mr.  Roswell  Smith.  When  George 
Kennan  was  gathering  in  long  and  painful  journeys  the 
material  for  his  great  work  on  the  Siberian  Exile  System, 
his  most  frequent  and  most  sympathetic  correspondent, 
outside  of  his  own  family,  was  the  busy  President  of  The 
Century  Co. 

He  not  only  earnesdy  supported  the  most  costly  and 
wide-reaching  plans,  but  from  his  direct  suggestion  came 
magazine  enterprises  of  breadth  and  moment.  Nor  was 
it  only  in  large  matters  that  his  mind  was  active  and 
helpful.  In  many  details  connected  with  the  appearance 
of  the  magazine  he  made  improvements :  for  nothing  to 
him  was  unimportant  that  tended  in  any  way  to  the  per- 
fection and  good  repute  of  the  publications  with  which 
The  Century  Co.  was  identified.  More  important  than 
everything  else,  in  addition  to  his  sympathetic  attitude, 
his  suggestiveness,  his  faculty  of  invention,  the  fertility 
of  his  resources, —  there  was  for  all  near  him  a  constant 
inspiration  and  spur  to  highest  effort  coming  from  his 

28 


Roswell  Smith 

fervid  faith  in  God  and  man ;  his  unswerving  confidence 
in  the  success  of  generous  methods  and  lofty  and  benefi- 
cent ideas. 


Other  memorials  of  his  life,  beautiful  and  enduring,  can 
be  pointed  out  [says  Dr.  Gladden],  but  it  is  in  this  maga- 
zine that  the  fairest  and  most  permanent  results  of  his 
work  will  abide.  Si  nwnumentmn  requiris,  circumspice . 
To  have  borne  so  large  a  part  in  originating  and  estab- 
lishing an  agency  like  this  would  be  a  sufficient  distinc- 
tion for  any  man.  .  .  .  Roswell  Smith  gave  his  life  to 
"The  Century  Magazine";  we  might  almost  say  that  he 
gave  his  life  for  it. 

Few  men,  not  contributors  to  literature,  have  had  [is 
the  testimony  of  the  New  York  "Evangelist"]  so  much 
to  do  with  the  development  of  a  national  literature  as  the 
founder  of  The  Century  Company,  and  one  of  the  foun- 
ders of  the  great  magazine  which  now  bears  that  name. 
If  Augustus  Caesar  could  say  that  he  found  Rome  of  brick 
and  left  it  of  marble,  the  men  who  projected  the  earlier 
"Scribner's  Magazine"  ["Scribner's  Monthly"]  have  surely 
the  right  to  say  that  they  found  American  literature  in- 
choate, and  left  it  a  thing  of  beautiful  form  and  splendid 
promise.  For  what  the  old  "Knickerbocker  Magazine" 
essayed  but  failed  to  do  for  American  letters,  that  America 
owes  to-day  to  the  magazines  of  which  the  early  "  Scrib- 
ner's "  set  the  type,  and  "  The  Century  "  to-day  maintains 
the  standard.  And  of  these  magazines  Roswell  Smith  was 
one  of  the  creators,  and  for  long  years  the  sustaining  spirit, 

29  1 


Roswell  Smith 

Few  men  [says  the  "Christian  Union"]  have  accom- 
phshed  results  so  great  in  a  Hfe  so  brief.  He  did  not  enter 
the  pubUshing  business  until  he  was  forty-one  years  of  age. 
He  retired  from  active  participation  in  it  nineteen  years 
later,  at  sixty.  In  the  mean  time  he  had  created  The  Century 
Company.  "The  Century  Magazine,"  the  "St.  Nicholas," 
"The  Century  Hymn-Books,"  and  "The  Century  Diction- 
ary "  may  all  be  characterized  as  the  children  of  his  brain. 
That  other  men  of  commensurate  ability  cooperated  with 
him  does  not  detract  from,  but  adds  to,  his  honor.  •  For  it 
reflects  the  greater  credit  on  his  ability  that  he  gathered 
about  him  men  who  supplemented  his  business  sagacity 
with  literary,  editorial,  and  business  skill  of  rare  quality. 
The  burdens  he  carried  and  the  energies  he  expended  in 
the  battle  of  life  told  upon  a  constitution  naturally  good, 
and  never  impaired  by  excesses  except  in  work.  For  the 
last  three  years  of  his  life  he  had  been  laid  aside  from 
active  business,  and  his  death  was  not  unexpected. 

It  is  not  chiefly,  however,  as  a  man  of  business  genius 
that  Roswell  Smith  will  be  remembered  by  those  who 
knew  him  best.  Goodness  is  more  enduring  than  great- 
ness ;  love  is  longer-lived  than  admiration ;  and  Roswell 
Smith  will  be  remembered  by  all  who  knew  him  be- 
cause they  loved  even  more  than  they  admired  him.  He 
carried  Christian  principles  into  his  business  life.  He 
proved  that  consistent  adherence  to  those  principles  does 
not  interfere  with,  but  promotes,  the  highest  success.  He 
practically  repudiated  the  doctrine  embodied  in  the  pagan 
motto,  "  Buy  in  the  cheapest  market  and  sell  in  the  dear- 
est." In  all  his  literary  deaUngs  he  paid,  not  the  least 
sum  that  was  necessary  to  secure  the  wares,  but  the  sum 

30 


Roswell  Smith 

which,  in  his  judgment,  fairly  represented  the  author's 
proportion  of  the  profits.  In  one  instance  within  our 
knowledge  he  voluntarily  paid  a  literary  colaborer  two 
and  a  half  times  the  price  which  the  author  had  himself 
suggested.  He  carried  the  same  spirit  into  all  dealings 
with  his  employees,  and  so  administered  his  business  that 
they  shared  with  him  in  its  enlarged  and  enlarging  pros- 
perity. He  trusted  to  the  honor  of  his  subordinates  rather 
than  to  pains  and  penalties.  One  young  man  obtaining 
employment  in  his  office,  and  asking  for  the  rules,  was 
told  there  were  none.  V/hen  the  young  man  expressed 
surprise,  and  asked  how  he  could  know  what  was  expected 
of  him,  he  received  for  answer,  "Carry  out  the  principles 
of  the  New  Testament.  When  you  have  understood  and 
fulfilled  those,  you  may  come  to  me  for  something  more." 
The  spirit  of  trust  and  confidence  which  Mr.  Roswell 
Smith  manifested  toward  those  who  cooperated  with  him, 
and  his  generous  desire  that  they  should  share  in  the  pros- 
perity which  his  genius  made  possible,  aroused  an  enthu- 
siasm which  a  more  worldly  and  selfish  method  of  dealing 
never  could  have  created.  This  spirit  of  enthusiasm,  the 
product  of  a  mutual  respect  and  a  mutual  cooperative 
interest,  is  the  secret  of  that  remarkable  growth  both  in 
usefulness  and  commercial  prosperity  which  has  charac- 
terized The  Century  Company.  The  world  is  better  and 
happier  because  Roswell  Smith  lived  in  it.  How  much 
it  owes  him  the  readers  of  his  pubhcations  probably  never 
think,  and,  indeed,  cannot  really  know. 

Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  bearing   witness 
in  the  pages  of  "St.  Nicholas,"  which  "never 

31 


Roswell  Smith 

would  have  had  an  existence  but  for  the  faith, 
enterprise,  and  foresight  of  its  founder,  Mr. 
Roswell  Smith,"  writes : 

Throughout  his  career  he  was  ambitious  for  the  work 
in  hand  rather  than  for  himself.  His  successes  were 
those  of  a  brave,  able,  honorable,  and  just-minded  Chris- 
tian, who  did  with  his  might  whatever  he  found  it  right 
to  do.  The  very  titles  of  the  two  little  stories  that  he 
wrote  for  "St.  Nicholas"  seem  now  to  have  a  special 
significance :  "  The  Boy  who  Worked,"  and  "  Little 
Holdfast." 

Roswell  Smith  had  passed  out  of  his  earlier 
occupations  not  because  of  any  insufficiency  for 
them,  but  rather  of  their  insufficiency  for  the 
peculiar  quality  of  his  great  talents.  From  his 
earliest  manhood  he  had  shown  unusual  ability 
for  the  law.  The  eminent  lawyer  in  whose 
office  he  read  —  for  law  offices  were  then  the 
law  schools  —  stated  that  he  was  the  best  student, 
the  most  promising  young  man,  and  the  most 
useful  assistant  he  had  ever  had  in  his  office. 
In  Indiana  he  had  had,  for  so  young  a  lawyer, 
many  important  employments,  and  in  later  life, 
when  he  had  been  long  withdrawn  from  legal 
practice  and  at  no  pains  to  keep  up  a  know- 
ledge of  the   law,  he  constantly  surprised   his 

32 


Roswell  Smith 

legal  advisers  by  his  great  familiarity  with  the 
principles  of  law,  his  apt  citations  of  them  with- 
out quoting  text-books  or  cases,  and  the  wisdom 
with  which,  from  them,  he  deduced  the  rules 
properly  governing  any  matter  in  hand ;  though, 
with  the  exception  of  a  single  earlier  expe- 
rience, his  business  affairs  during  this  period 
were  the  most  difficult,  perplexing,  and  impor- 
tant with  which  he  was  ever  connected.  A 
considerable  portion  of  them  involved  the  pro- 
gress of  The  Century  Co.  from  a  highly  re- 
spectable and  fairly  prosperous  corporation  to 
the  very  great  proportions,  influence,  and  suc- 
cess to  which  it  had  attained  at  the  time  of  his 
death.  "  In  that  regard,"  writes  Mr.  Cephas 
Brainerd,  for  the  last  fifteen  years  of  Roswell 
Smith's  life  his  principal  and  intimate  legal 
adviser,  and  from  whose  memoranda  these  facts 
are  almost  literally  quoted,  "he  was  one  of 
the  most  helpful  clients  whom  I  have  ever 
known." 

His  ability  as  a  draftsman  of  legal  papers 
was  extraordinary.  "  In  all  my  practice,"  writes 
Mr.  Brainerd,  "  I  have  never  fallen  in  with  a 
business  man  who  could  make  so  complete  a 
draft  of  a  complicated  contract  as  did  he  on 

6  33 


Roswell  Smith 

many  occasions.  Such  a  paper  prepared  by 
him  generally  expressed  the  legal  effect  of  an 
understanding  between  parties  in  such  language 
and  with  such  clearness  as  to  meet  the  views  of 
all  concerned,  and  to  require  only  slight  changes 
of  phrase  to  satisfy  conflicting  feelings.  Long 
after  disease  had  begun  to  tell  upon  him,  a  con- 
dition arose  which  threatened  a  suit  in  equity 
to  protect  important  interests  in  which  others 
were  concerned  with  him.  There  had  been 
some  consultation  between  us,  and  much  cor- 
respondence. While  we  were  all  considering 
what  position  it  were  best  to  take  if  driven  to  a 
suit,  I  received  from  him  the  outline  of  a  bill 
of  complaint,  covering  many  pages,  character- 
ized by  the  utmost  care,  skill,  and  complete- 
ness, and  worthy  of  a  good  lawyer  in  the  largest 
practice  on  the  chancery  side  of  the  court." 

His  innate  intimacy  with  the  spirit  of  the 
law,  as  well  as  his  familiarity  with  its  forms  and 
processes,  was  marvelously  illustrated  in  per- 
plexing questions  arising  out  of  differing  senses 
of  injury,  dignity,  and  moral  right  held  by  op- 
posite parties  maintaining  antagonistic  claims. 
His  quick  discernment  and  prompt  adaptation 
of  ethical  principles  involved   in  the  law,  in 

34 


Roswell  Smith 

short,  his  diplomatic  skill,  enabled  him  to  dis- 
pose of  many  serious  difficulties  that  otherwise 
would  have  risen  to  the  dignity  of  important 
suits  at  law.  It  rendered  it  possible  for  The 
Century  Co.  to  make  its  prodigious  progress 
through  all  the  years  of  his  presidency  without 
a  single  litigation,  and,  as  a  rule,  without  the 
production  of  permanent  harsh  feeling  any- 
where. He  saw  at  once  what  was  legally  valu- 
able in  any  discussion  of  interests,  and  wasted 
no  time  and  no  thought  upon  what  was  unim- 
portant :  while  as  to  what  was  important  he  was 
strenuous,  but  politic.  He  certainly  was  am- 
bitious. His  purpose  being  ever  of  the  highest, 
he  was  determined  and  aggressive,  untiring  in 
his  effort  to  increase  the  strength  and  power  of 
The  Century  Co.  But  his  methods  were  both 
just  and  generous,  even  to  those  who  sought 
to  obstruct  his  way,  and  he  never  sought  to  in- 
jure others,  even  to  secure  the  realization  of  any 
of  his  highest  hopes. 

During  the  progress  of  the  movement  for 
international  copyright,  a  suggestion  that  the 
whole  matter  could  be  accomplished  by  treaty 
had  been  much  discussed  in  the  newspapers, 
and  diplomatically  considered,  to  some  extent, 

35 


Roswell  Smith 

between  our  own  Government  and  that  of  Great 
Britain.  A  projet  of  a  treaty  had  been  pre- 
pared and  perhaps  exchanged  for  consideration. 
At  this  juncture  Roswell  Smith,  in  an  elaborate 
letter  to  an  important  personage  connected  with 
this  initiated  negotiation,  suggested  —  and  "so 
far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn,"  says  Mr. 
Brainerd,  "the  objection  originated  with  him. 
In  the  first  consultation  I  had  with  him  on  the 
subject,  he  had  in  hand  a  draft  of  a  letter  ex- 
pressing his  views  "  —  that  the  Constitution  did 
not  permit  any  such  arrangement  as  was  con- 
templated ;  in  short,  that  the  treaty-making 
power  was  quite  too  circumscribed  to  compass 
the  adjustment  of  the  difficulties  involved  in 
the  subject.  The  result  of  this  letter  was  that 
the  thought  of  a  treaty  was  given  up,  and  re- 
course was  again  had  to  Congress,  with  final 
success. 

"Diligent  in  business,  fervent  in  spirit,  serv- 
ing the  Lord "  was  the  precept  that  hung, 
printed  in  gold,  just  above  his  office  desk. 
But  his  practice  was  yet  better;  he  rarely  led 
in  mirth,  full  of  cheer  as  he  ever  was,  but 
maybe  all  the  more  for  that  he  was  a  very 
happy  man,   and   it   was   one   of  the    richest 

36 


Roswell  Smith 

sources  of  his  daily  happiness  to  be  not  dili- 
gent simply,  but  chivalrous  in  business.  It 
happened  often  that,  a  matter  having  turned 
out  more  profitably  than  he  had  anticipated,  he 
would  cause  to  be  added  an  unsolicited  bonus 
of  hundreds  of  dollars  to  its  originally  stipu- 
lated price. 

An  artist,  at  the  time  of  the  occurrence  poor 
and  uninfluential,  demanded  for  some  illustra- 
tions twice  what  the  art  editor  thought  he 
should  be  paid.  The  art  editor  brought  the 
matter  privately  before  Roswell  Smith,  who 
asked  promptly : 

"Do  you  think  he  is  trying  to  overreach 
you?" 

"  Consciously,  by  no  means.  He  believes 
they  are  worth  what  he  asks." 

"  Then  pay  him  his  price ;  we  can't  afford 
to  have  him  think  we  are  stingy." 

No  man  ever  more  wholly  or  joyfully  be- 
lieved in  the  commercial  value  of  doing  busi- 
ness on  principles  of  Christian  unselfishness. 
He  used  to  say  laughingly  that  the  Lord  never 
gave  him  time  to  enjoy  any  self-complacency 
over  any  act  of  generosity  in  business.  He  "al- 
ways made  it  pay  so  well  and  so  quickly." 

37 


Roswell  Smith 

Neither  did  any  man  ever  know  better  than 
Roswell  Smith  the  value  of  routine  ;  but  none 
knew  better  the  evil  and  loss  of  yielding  to  the 
spirit  of  routine.  To  him  routine  was  a  mere 
base  of  operations,  a  point  of  perpetual  de- 
parture upon  countless  radii  of  enterprise  and 
improvement.  He  seemed  ever  to  be  stirred 
from  within  by  the  spirit  of  Emerson's  words: 
"  Nothing  stands  still  in  nature  but  death ;  the 
whole  creation  is  on  wheels,  in  transit,  always 
passing  into  something  else,  streaming  into 
something  higher.  .  .  .  Thin  or  solid,  every- 
thing is  in  flight;  .  .  .  everything  undressing 
and  stealing  away  from  its  old  into  new  form, 
and  nothing  fast  but  those  invisible  cords  which 
we  call  laws,  on  which  all  is  strung." 

The  invention  of  new  schemes,  new  meth- 
ods, the  opening  of  new  fields,  became  the  de- 
light of  his  fancy.  These  were  new  machinery; 
routine  was  the  old.  He  never  tired  of  the  old 
because  it  was  old,  or  changed  to  new  for  nov- 
elty's sake  ;  but  he  bore  in  mind  the  fact  that 
millions  constantly  do.  And  therefore,  though 
never  quixotic  or  fantastical  in  any  act,  no  plan 
or  thought,  from  within  or  without,  could  be  so 
new  or  unusual  as  to  be  turned  away  uncon- 

38 


Roswell  Smith 

sidered  by  his  hospitable  mind :  while  from 
himself  came  a  ceaseless  stream  of  new  sug- 
gestions, often  fanciful  to  a  degree,  and  evi- 
dently brought  forward  simply  to  keep  up  the 
war  against  the  spirit  of  routine. 

There  were  doubtless  other  causes,  but  this 
is  certainly  one,  that  from  the  day  of  his  en- 
trance into  the  business  of  magazine-making, 
whether  for  adults  or  children,  dates  the  revo- 
lution in  aims  and  methods  which  has  made 
American  magazines  the  admiration  of  the 
world.  Almost  or  quite  his  initial  declaration 
as  he  entered  into  the  work  was  that  the  general 
fashion  of  making  a  magazine  an  adjunct  to  a 
book-publishing  business  was  not  necessary  even 
if  it  were — which  he  doubted — legitimate.  No 
organ  of  universal  truth,  right,  welfare,  and  cul- 
ture, he  maintained,  could  fulfil  its  very  largest 
destiny  while  held  in  leash  by  interests  not  es- 
sential to  its  own  being.  He  would  make  a 
magazine  the  possible  mother  of  any  such  in- 
terest, but  never  its  daughter;  and  when  he 
laid  down  the  work,  he  left  the  great  magazine 
he  had  done  so  much  to  create  the  majestic 
convoy  of  a  heavily  and  costly  freighted  book- 
publishing  business.     With   his  associates,  he 

39 


Roswell  Smith 

claimed  for  the  magazine  of  his  and  their  con- 
ception no  more,  no  less,  than  this — a  field  as 
wide  as  all  human  interests,  a  responsibility  as 
wide  as  that  field,  and  a  liberty  as  wide  as  that 
responsibility. 

When  they  began  their  work  there  was  in 
our  country  a  distance,  an  estrangement,  be- 
tween culture  and  religion,  between  author  and 
preacher,  artist  and  common  people,  scientist 
and  Bible  student,  that  is  now  not  easily  rea- 
lized. To  remove  that  gulf,  to  draw  these  ele- 
ments, by  a  kind  and  faithful  energy,  nearer  to 
one  another,  was  recognized  as  one  large  article 
of  the  magazine's  great  commission.  Of  this 
high  aim,  and  of  the  specific  steps  taken  to 
fulfil  it,  Mr.  Charles  Scribner  was  the  earnest 
supporter  and  seconder.  But  while  the  work 
was  still  almost  in  its  beginnings  he  died,  and  it 
is  significant  of  the  boldness  and  energy  of  those 
he  left  behind,  that  in  this  sad  event  the  more 
conservative  elements,  especially  of  the  religious 
press,  censoriously  found  their  explanation  of 
the  magazine's  audacious  progressiveness.  For 
it  turned  not  away  with  prudential  silence  from 
any  pressing  question  of  politics  or  religion  if 
only  the  interest  were,  or  could  and  should  be 

40 


RosweH  Smith 

made,  wide  enough  to  justify  its  presentation  by 
a  publication  whose  field  was  the  world.  In 
order  that  it  might  be,  in  noblest  guise,  for 
Americans,  by  Americans,  it  essayed  to  be, 
and  under  Roswell  Smith's  presidency  it  be- 
came, a  voice  of  truth — of  all  truth,  civic,  scien- 
tific, esthetical,  ethical — from  the  whole  world 
to  the  whole  world,  by  the  avenue  of  American 
publication. 

To  realize  fully  how  much  the  life  of  Roswell 
Smith  and  the  history  of  the  magazine  he  took 
part  in  founding  signify,  each  to  other,  we  need 
to  remember  that  almost  ever  since  it  began  to 
be  "The  Century"  he  was  the  only  survivor  of 
its  three  founders.  With  almost  arithmetical 
exactness  the  gravestone  of  Dr.  Holland,  its 
first  editor-in-chief,  marks  the  half-way  bound 
between  its  first  issue,  in  November,  1871,  and 
the  death  of  The  Century  Co.'s  first  president 
in  April,  1892;  for  Dr.  Holland  was  taken  in 
October,  1881.  The  monumental  achievements 
that  have  made  ""The  Century  Magazine"  a 
factor  in  American  history  date  within  the  last 
ten  years;  yet  no  one  so  eagerly  as  Roswell 
Smith  attributed  them  to  the  staff  of  younger 
men  under  his  wise  and  loving  leadership. 

7  41 


RosweU  Smith 

To  have  work  in  common  with  RosweU 
Smith  was  the  key  to  the  whole  wealth  of  his 
personal  friendship  and  solicitude.  Those  who 
had  not  this  key  now  and  then  misunderstood 
and  undervalued  him,  because  work  too  com- 
pletely preoccupied  him  to  leave  room  for  the 
cultivation  of  indiscriminately  winning  ways. 
But  to  have  work  with  him  was  to  love  him, 
as  well  as  to  be  loved  by  him.  In  spirit  he 
seemed  ever  saying  of  all  who  were  in  any 
way  related  to  him  as  colaborers,  "Behold  my 
mother  and  my  brethren." 

Comparatively  slight  acquaintances  could 
bear  witness  that  "  all  the  force  of  such  a  char- 
acter was  combined  with  a  personal  kindliness 
which  everywhere  called  out  answering  esteem 
and  regard,"  that  he  "was  a  man  to  call  out 
much  personal  affection  on  account  of  the 
heartiness  of  his  nature  and  the  nobility  of  his 
character,"  "a  man  of  large  ideas  and  of  large 
charity,"  "  a  courteous  and  most  agreeable  gen- 
tleman," or  that  "he  carried  his  religion  into 
his  daily  work,  and  abounded  in  acts  of  charity 
and  benevolence."  But  the  nearer  men  were  to 
him  the  more  abundant  was,  and  is  now,  the 
measure   of  their  praise,  reverence,  and  love. 

42 


Roswell  Smith 

What  tliis  measure  was  let  the  following  offer- 
ings signify : 

To  its  president  The  Century  Co.  was  truly  an  indi- 
vidual, beloved  as  a  favorite  child.  There  was  hardly  a 
waking  hour  of  his  life,  especially  after  the  company 
entered  upon  a  separate  existence,  in  which  he  was  not 
pondering  on  and  planning  for  its  enterprises  present  and 
to  come.     .     .     . 

.  .  .  He  took  his  pleasure  in  his  labors  as  they 
went  on;  and  he  had  so  poured  his  individuality  into  the 
corporate  life  which  was  largely  his  creation  that  he 
seemed  to  see  much  of  his  own  personal  energy  and  in- 
dividuality existing  along  the  future  in  forms  of  usefulness 
to  mankind. 

Roswell  Smith  had  somewhat  of  the  reserve  attributed 
to  the  New  England  character,  and  his  mind  was  con- 
centrated on  the  principal  work  of  his  life  with  peculiar 
intensity.  Yet  collectively  and  individually  his  business 
associates  and  employees  have  all  and  each  at  various 
times,  and  in  many  an  hour  of  stress  and  trouble,  found 
in  him  a  kind,  sympathetic,  and  generous  friend.  There 
are  men  of  letters  in  this  country  whose  lives  have  been 
made  smoother  and  brighter  because  of  his  faith  in  them, 
and  because  of  his  friendly  and  substantial  encouragement, 
proffered  in  all  respect  and  manhness.  He  has  done  a 
good  work  in  many  ways;  in  a  sense  no  one  can  "take 
his  place  "  :  but  the  spirit  in  which  he  labored  will  not  soon 
fail  of  inspiration  for  his  survivors  and  successors. 

R.  W.  Gilder. 


43 


Roswell  Smith 

.  .  ,  As  the  result  of  less  than  a  single  score  of 
years  of  business  activity  in  New  York,  Roswell  Smith 
left  two  monumental  achievements,  either  of  which  is 
large  enough  to  have  engaged  a  lifetime.  These  are 
"The  Century  Magazine"  and  "The  Century  Diction- 
ary," which,  on  their  business  side,  were  distinctly  his 
work.  Much  of  Roswell  Smith's  success  was  due  proba- 
bly to  good  fortune  in  literary  and  business  associates. 
But  without  his  ever-fresh  originahty  in  business  methods, 
his  largeness  of  plan,  and  that  momentum  by  which  he 
overbore  all  difficulties,  success  so  large  and  complete 
would  have  been  impossible. 

Every  man  has  his  limitations,  and  Mr.  Smith's  were 
apparent.  He  was  by  nature  restricted  to  large  under- 
takings. He  had  no  relish  for  success  by  detail  —  for  a 
victory  made  up  of  successful  skirmishes.  He  told  me  once 
that  he  thought  himself  personally  unfitted  for  ordinary 
book-publishing.  Besides  those  enterprises  that  he  en- 
gaged in  with  varying  success,  he  contemplated  and  ne- 
gotiated regarding  others  that  came  to  nothing,  but  the 
very  conception  of  which  was  enough  to  take  the  breath. 
One  might  say  that  he  had  a  passion  for  undertakings  of 
the  cosmical  sort. 

A  remarkable  example  of  his  liberality  in  expenditure 
and  the  expansiveness  of  his  ideas  is  to  be  found  in  the 
history  of  "The  Century  Dictionary."  As  at  first  pro- 
jected it  was  to  cost  a  trifle  of  twenty  thousand  dollars  to 
revise  the  English  "  Imperial  Dictionary,"  and  to  adapt  it 
to  American  use.  But  the  ideal  of  a  vastly  greater  work 
grew  by  degrees,  and  the  ultimate  cost  was,  I  suppose, 
nearer  to  a  million  than  to  the  first  estimate.     There  was 


44 


Roswell  Smith 

a  conservative  caution  in  his  character,  and  in  some 
moods  he  shrank  from  the  boldness  of  his  own  enterprises. 
When  he  had  added  to  his  original  third  of  "  The  Century 
Magazine  "  almost  the  whole  of  the  other  two  thirds,  he 
found  himself  burdened  with  a  financial  responsibility  that 
seemed  appalling,  and  he  thought  of  selling  again  a  con- 
siderable block  of  the  stock;  but  he  quickly  regained  his 
nerve,  and  held  his  course  with  most  fortunate  results. 
At  a  later  period,  when  the  full  measure  of  the  expen- 
diture needed  to  complete  the  dictionary  became  evident, 
he  explained  to  me  as  a  friend  how  it  had  grown  to  such 
vast  proportions,  with  the  avowed  intention  of  making  it 
possible  for  me  to  do  him  justice  if  financial  disaster 
should  result.  But  again  his  foresight  was  justified  by 
the  event.  .  .  . 

Among  his  interests  was  a  large  share  in  a  coal-mine. 
Hearing  that  the  miners  were  dissatisfied,  he  repaired  to 
the  place,  and  found  them  holding  a  meeting  in  the  woods 
at  an  inclement  season.  He  persuaded  them  to  adjourn 
to  a  hall  in  the  village,  the  rent  of  which  he  defrayed  for 
them,  learned  the  grounds  of  discontent,  and  came  to 
an  understanding  with  them.  It  was  and  is  the  habit 
of  corporations  owning  mines  to  conduct  stores,  from 
which  the  workmen  are  obliged,  by  one  device  or 
another,  to  buy  at  exorbitant  rates;  but  Mr.  Smith  set 
up  a  store  at  which  no  man  was  under  any  compul- 
sion to  buy,  and  which  furnished  the  men  their  sup- 
plies at  much  lower  rates  than  they  had  been  paying 
to  the  village  merchants.  In  one  mine  he  retained  an 
interest  after  his  removal  to  the  East,  and  a  resident  of 
the  region  told  me  that  Mr.  Roswell  Smith  sent  a  copy 

45 


Roswell  Smith 

of  one  of  his  magazines  into  the  household  of  every  work- 
man in  the  mine. 

In  The  Century  Co.,  under  Mr.  Smith's  presidency, 
the  heads  of  every  department  had  opportunity  to  be- 
come stockholders.  At  one  time  of  exceptional  pros- 
perity a  portion  of  the  profits  was  divided  among  the 
employees,  down  to  the  humblest.  An  amusing  story  is 
told  of  the  wife  of  a  man  employed  in  a  non-literary 
capacity  by  The  Century  Co.  She  was  quite  unable  to 
believe  her  husband's  account  of  the  dividend,  and  she 
lay  awake  all  night,  distressed  with  suspicions  of  his  dis- 
honesty. I  do  not  know  whether  Mr.  Roswell  Smith  re- 
tained to  the  last  the  conviction  I  have  often  heard  him 
express,  that  such  cooperative  methods  were  profitable  in  a 
business  sense.  They  have  their  advantages  and  their  in- 
conveniences, but  they  certainly  tend  to  do  away  with  the 
unhappy  conflict  between  labor  and  capital,  and  to  "  make 
the  earth  wholesome."  Roswell  Smith  was  a  conspicuous 
and  active  member  of  a  church,  but  it  is  much  more  to 
the  point  to  say  that  there  are  very  many  who  cherish  a 
grateful  remembrance  of  his  generosity.  He  probably 
gave  like  others  to  remote  philanthropies,  but  it  is  far 
higher  praise  that  those  whose  lives  were  most  closely 
associated  with  his  own  found  him  magnanimously 
thoughtful  of  their  welfare. 

Edward  Eggleston. 

In  seeking  to  gather  up  for  grateful  recognition  some 
of  the  finer  qualities  of  Roswell  Smith,  my  thought  first 
rests  upon  a  certain  largeness  of  conception  which  char- 
acterized all  his  undertakings.     He  liked  to  do  great 

46 


Roswell  Smith 

things;  he  had  the  courage  that  is  not  appalled  by  diffi- 
culties, and  the  faith  that  removes  mountains.  The  "  St. 
Nicholas  Magazine  "  was  started  in  the  very  moment  of 
wide-spread  commercial  depression.  His  plans  for  the 
extension  of  the  sale  of  the  magazines  were  bold  and 
enterprising ;  his  ambition  was  to  make  them  as  good  as 
they  could  be  made,  and  he  grudged  no  outlay  for  this 
purpose ;  his  confident  expectation  was  that  the  best 
thing  would  turn  out  to  be  the  most  profitable.  His 
residence  in  the  West  had  given  him  large  ideas  respect- 
ing the  publisher's  field ;  he  thought  that  the  West  and 
the  South  as  well  as  the  North  and  the  East  were  cardi- 
nal points  in  the  publisher's  compass.  When  the  maga- 
zines had  won  their  footing  on  this  continent,  he  boldly 
carried  them  to  England;  what  was  good  enough  for 
Americans  was  good  enough  for  Englishmen.  This  was 
the  first  invasion  of  the  British  market  by  the  American 
periodical.  The  large  success  of  the  undertaking  opened 
the  way  for  other  publications ;  and  American  magazines, 
now  on  sale  on  every  bookstand,  have  exerted  an  impor- 
tant influence  upon  English  opinion  concerning  America. 
The  quality  of  his  mind  is  illustrated  by  the  project  of 
"  The  Century  Dictionary."  This  was  purely  his  own. 
The  scheme  of  owning  and  publishing  a  great  dictionary 
of  the  English  language  laid  hold  upon  him  many  years 
ago.  "It  is  an  open  question  with  us " — so  he  wrote 
eleven  years  ago — "  whether  it  is  best  for  us  to  buy  one 
of  the  leading  dictionaries  and  build  on  that,  or  to  organ- 
ize the  scholarship  of  the  English-speaking  world  and 
make  a  new  one.  There  must  be  one  English  language, 
and  a  common  standard  of  the  English  tongue."     He 

47 


Roswell  Smith 

saw  no  reason  why  this  should  not  be  pubhshed  in  New 
York.  The  purchase  of  the  right  to  revise  and  repubUsh 
"  The  Imperial  Dictionary  "  in  America  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  this  enterprise.  It  was  thought  at  the  outset  that 
a  "  slight  revision  "  would  fit  the  four  volumes  of  "  The 
Imperial "  for  the  market ;  but  the  scope  of  the  work  at 
once  began  to  broaden,  and  before  anything  had  been 
realized  from  the  sale  of  the  dictionary,  nearly  fifty  times 
as  much  money  was  expended  as  had  been  provided  for 
in  the  original  estimate.  In  all  this  his  courage  never 
faltered.  The  ambition  to  "  make  it  what  it  ought  to 
be"  was  far  stronger  than  any  financial  consideration. 
His  satisfaction  in  the  perfection  of  the  work,  his  sense  of 
its  value  to  the  world,  were  to  him  a  great  reward.  It 
was  precisely  in  such  concerns  as  this  that  the  peculiarity 
of  his  mind  appeared.  The  importance  of  a  work  like 
the  making  of  a  great  dictionary  was  obvious  to  him. 
He  could  see  its  relations  to  all  science,  to  the  spread 
of  accurate  knowledge  in  the  world.  He  knew  that  lan- 
guage is  the  instrument  of  thought,  the  medium  of  com- 
munication, the  vehicle  of  truth ;  that  whatever  makes  it 
more  precise,  more  luminous,  more  perfect,  is  a  great 
benefit  to  all  men.  How  many  of  the  disputes  that  have 
disturbed  the  Church  and  convulsed  the  State  have 
grown  out  of  verbal  ambiguities.  How  much  of  the 
dogmatism  that  infects  philosophy  as  well  as  religion 
would  disappear  if  men  would  only  study  and  under- 
stand the  history  of  the  words  they  are  using.  An  im- 
proved and  perfected  philology,  based  upon  historical 
research,  which  gives  us  the  elements  of  the  words  that 
are  in  our  mouths  every  day,  and  shows  us  how  they  have 

48 


Roswell  Smith 

come  to  stand  for  the  ideas  which  we  assign  to  them,  is 
certainly  not  less  important  to  civiHzation  than  the  new 
chemistry,  which  reveals  to  us  the  elements  of  which  phys- 
ical bodies  are  composed.  And  the  ambition  to  carry  this 
work  of  linguistic  exploration  and  analysis  to  the  very 
highest  perfection,  so  that  the  English  language  may  be 
known  in  all  its  roots  and  branches,  and  all  its  terms  may 
be  used  with  the  greatest  possible  precision,  was  certainly 
a  lofty  ambition.  The  rank  which  has  been  assigned  to 
this  publication  among  literary  enterprises  in  this  country 
is  well  known.  It  is  only  important  to  remember  what  is 
said  about  it,  in  the  preface,  by  its  distinguished  editor: 
"The  design  originated  early  in  1882  in  a  proposal  to 
adapt  '  The  Imperial  Dictionary '  to  American  needs, 
made  by  Mr.  Roswell  Smith,  President  of  The  Century- 
Co.,  who  has  supported  with  unfailing  faith  and  the  largest 
liberality  the  plans  of  the  editors  as  they  have  gradually 
extended  far  beyond  the  original  limits." 

An  instance  of  his  large  administrative  ability  is  seen 
in  the  reform  which  was  made  several  years  ago,  at  his 
suggestion,  in  the  method  of  handling  second-class 
matter  by  the  Post-office  Department.  Formerly  the 
postage  on  all  periodicals  passing  through  the  mails  was 
paid  by  subscribers ;  or,  if  prepaid  by  publishers,  a  sepa- 
rate account  was  made  of  every  copy.  Roswell  Smith 
proposed  to  the  authorities  that  the  periodicals  be 
weighed  in  bulk  and  prepaid  by  the  publisher.  The 
simplification  of  the  method  saves  an  indefinite  amount 
of  petty  detail  and  annoyance  to  both  publisher  and  sub- 
scriber, and  doubtless  has  introduced  into  the  Department 
a  considerable  economy, 

8  49 


Roswell  Smith 

Roswell  Smith's  mind  was  not  only  large  in  the  scope 
and  range  of  its  activity,  it  was  exceedingly  fertile.  His 
brain  was  teeming  with  new  enterprises  and  new  methods; 
suggestions  poured  into  every  department  of  the  busi- 
ness. These  were  not  all  practicable;  and  when  they 
were  not,  discussion  generally  revealed  the  fact  to  him. 
His  mind  was  as  bountiful  as  nature  herself  in  producing 
varieties  of  ideas;  under  the  natural  selection  of  free 
debate,  he  expected  the  fittest  to  survive.  His  friends, 
in  all  callings,  are  indebted  to  him  for  many  quickening 
hints.  His  vital  mind  tended  to  fructify  every  theme 
that  it  touched.  In  my  work  as  a  pastor  he  has  often 
given  me  useful  suggestions,  and  the  most  popular  con- 
tribution that  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  make  to  "  The 
Century" — "The  Christian  League  of  Connecticut"  — 
sprang  from  a  request  made  by  him.  "  I  want  you,"  he 
said,  "  to  write  a  kind  of  a  story  showing  how  the  Chris- 
tian people  of  some  town  got  together  and  learned  how 
to  cooperate  in  Christian  work."  The  elaboration  of  the 
idea  was  my  own,  but  the  idea  was  his,  and  justice  to 
him  requires  this  acknowledgment. 

To  "  The  Century  Magazine  "  Mr.  Smith's  only  literary 
contribution  was  a  brief  poem  published  in  one  of  the 
early  numbers;  but  he  found  pleasure,  as  did  many  of 
his  young  readers,  in  two  short  stories  which  he  wrote 
for  "  St.  Nicholas." 

Mr.  Roswell  Smith  was  deeply  interested  in  all  the 
current  movements  of  politics  and  religion.  The  failure 
of  the  Independents  in  1884  to  organize  a  new  party  he 
greatly  deplored ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  time  was 
ripe  for  a  new  grouping  of  the  political  elements.     The 

50 


Roswell  Smith 

attempt  to  keep  the  fires  of  sectional  hatred  burning  was 
utterly  distasteful  to  him;  he  strongly  desired  that  the 
North  and  the  South  should  come  to  a  better  under- 
standing. The  series  of  papers  on  "  The  Great  South," 
published  in  the  magazine  under  its  old  name,  was  sug- 
gested by  Roswell  Smith  to  Dr.  Holland,  and  it  aided, 
no  doubt,  in  bringing  about  a  better  state  of  feeling. 
Yet  this  wish  for  more  amicable  relations  between  the 
two  regions  was  not  due  to  any  lack  of  interest  in  the 
welfare  of  the  Southern  negroes,  as  his  work  for  Berea 
College  amply  testifies.  This  institution,  on  the  borders 
of  the  mountain  district  of  Kentucky,  in  which  both 
sexes  and  both  races  are  educated  together,  was  one  of 
the  special  objects  of  his  care;  the  broad  humanity  of  its 
foundation,  and  the  directness  of  its  ministry  to  the 
neediest  human  beings,  commended  it  to  his  sympathy. 

Roswell  Smith's  interest  in  rehgion  was  deep  and  abid- 
ing. His  faith  was  as  simple  and  unquestioning  as  that 
of  Faraday ;  his  appeal  to  divine  guidance  in  every  matter 
of  importance  was  as  natural  and  habitual  as  that  of 
General  Gordon.  The  direct  intervention  of  the  divine 
power  in  human  affairs  was  to  him  a  living  reality.  The 
institutions  of  religion  were  his  special  care.  Though  of 
Congregational  origin,  he  was  for  the  greater  part  of  his 
life  a  member  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  and  the  Memo- 
rial Church  of  that  denomination  in  New  York  (now  the 
Madison  Avenue  Church)  owes  much  to  his  brave  finan- 
cial leadership.  He  was  not,  however,  the  kind  of  man 
whom  any  sect  can  monopolize :  for  many  years  he  was 
the  president  of  the  New  York  Congregational  Club,  and 
he  worshiped  during  the  last  years  of  his  hfe  with  one  of 


Roswell  Smith 

the  Reformed  churches.  The  wish  for  a  closer  and  more 
practical  unity  among  the  churches,  which  found  expres- 
sion in  the  suggestion  about  the  Christian  League,  was 
always  in  his  heart.  He  was  a  vice-president,  I  think,  of 
the  American  Congress  of  Churches,  which  undertook  to 
do  something  for  Christian  union  in  this  country;  and  as 
an  officer  of  the  American  Tract  Society,  he  strove  to 
rejuvenate  the  life  and  to  enlarge  the  function  of  that 
venerable  institution.  "  Parish  Problems,"  one  of  the 
books  published  by  The  Century  Co.,  revealed  Roswell 
Smith's  desire  "  to  do  something  to  help  the  minister." 
His  motive  in  undertaking  the  publication  was  to  make  a 
book  in  which  the  people  could  be  shown  how  to  coop- 
erate in  the  work  of  the  local  church.  He  wished  thus 
to  say  to  the  members  of  the  church  many  things  which 
they  greatly  need  to  hear  and  which  the  minister  cannot 
say ;  it  was  to  be  a  treatise  in  parish  theology,  to  offset 
the  instruction  in  pastoral  theology  which  the  minis- 
ter receives  in  the  seminary.  This  desire  to  serve  the 
churches  found  expression  in  a  movement,  to  which  he 
lent  his  influence  and  his  personal  co5peration,  to  lift  the 
load  from  churches  which  were  burdened  by  debt.  Ros- 
well Smith  entered  upon  this  work  with  enthusiasm,  and 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  a  number  of  churches  set 
free  from  their  encumbrances. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this  great  publisher  was 
beyond  the  influence  of  the  motives  which  usually  control 
men  of  business.  He  wanted  to  succeed  in  his  business. 
To  the  expectation  of  wealth  his  mind  was  not  inhospita- 
ble; but  he  meant  to  conduct  his  business  in  an  honorable 
way,  and,  more  than  this,  he  was  glad  to  make  it  tributary 

52 


Roswell  Smith 

to  higher  interests.  If  he  could  see  that  a  given  venture 
was  Hkely  to  aid  the  churches,  this  fact  added  greatly  to 
its  attractiveness.  The  publication  of  hymn  and  service 
books,  in  which  he  has  been  a  leader,  was  not  wholly  a 
matter  of  business  with  him ;  the  purification  and  eleva- 
tion of  the  psalmody  of  church  and  Sunday-school  en- 
listed his  enthusiasm.  In  the  last  serious  conversation 
which  I  had  with  him,  he  opened  to  me  a  great  scheme 
with  which  his  mind  was  laboring  —  to  organize  the  best 
Biblical  scholarship  of  this  country  for  the  translation  and 
publication  of  a  popular  edition  of  the  Bible.  He  pro- 
posed to  follow  mainly  the  suggestions  of  the  American 
revisers;  perhaps  also  to  make  such  judicious  selection  of 
Biblical  material  as  would  better  fit  the  Sacred  Scriptures 
to  be  read  through  in  families.  No  man  had  a  deeper 
reverence  for  the  Holy  Book ;  but  he  was  of  the  opinion 
that  its  value  for  popular  use  might  be  increased  by  a 
careful  collection  of  its  more  nutritious  parts.  I  sought 
to  dissuade  him  from  the  enterprise,  which  he  was  in  no 
condition  of  health  to  undertake;  but  the  bent  of  his  mind 
appears  in  the  proposition. 

It  is  not,  however,  in  these  specific  plans  that  his  re- 
ligious purpose  was  realized  so  much  as  in  his  deeper 
intention  to  make  all  his  work  as  a  publisher  serviceable 
to  that  kingdom  for  whose  coming  he  prayed.  He  desired 
that  the  two  magazines,  especially,  should  be  powerful  in- 
struments of  righteousness ;  that  the  tone  of  them  should 
always  be  elevated;  that  nothing  impure  or  unworthy 
should  be  allowed  to  appear  in  them;  that  they  should 
never  be  permitted  to  assail  or  undermine  genuine  faith 
or  pure  morality;  that  they  should  pour  into  the  com- 

53 


Roswell  Smith 

munity  a  constant  stream  of  refining  influence  —  this  was 
his  central  purpose,  his  lofty  ambition.  The  efforts  of  his 
editors  in  this  direction  he  always  heartily  supported.  I 
know  well,  from  many  conversations  with  him,  how  deep 
and  serious  was  this  desire.  I  should  do  my  friend  a  great 
disservice  if  I  tried  to  convey  the  impression  that  he  was 
not  a  keen,  far-sighted  business  man ;  but  I  believe  that 
he  was  something  more  than  this,  and  that  all  his  thoughts 
about  business  were  affected  and,  to  some  good  degree, 
shaped  by  the  wish  and  the  hope  to  do  something  for  the 
improvement  of  the  world  in  which  he  lived.  He  meant 
to  be,  and  he  believed  himself  to  be, a  co-worker  with  God. 
The  issues  of  the  presses  that  he  had  set  in  motion  were 
spreading  light  and  beauty,  truth  and  love,  among  men ; 
they  were  helping  to  make  the  world  better  every  day.  He 
knew  it,  and  gloried  in  it.  With  all  the  personal  satisfac- 
tion which  he  derived  from  the  success  of  his  business 
ventures  was  mingled  the  deeper  feeling  of  thankfulness 
for  the  privilege  of  serving  the  higher  interests  of  his 

fellow-men. 

Washington  Gladden. 

Roswell  Smith,  from  early  manhood  a  life-member  of 
the  American  Tract  Society,  was  quickened  to  a  new  in- 
terest in  its  affairs  when  his  pastor,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Robin- 
son, became  editor  of  its  "Illustrated  Christian  Weekly," 
which  interest  culminated  at  the  annual  meeting  of  1886, 
when,  on  his  motion,  a  committee  was  appointed  "  to  in- 
quire into  the  practical  workings  of  the  society,  and  to 
recommend  such  changes  in  its  constitution,  methods,  and 
management  as  may  seem  desirable."     Declining  to  be- 

54 


Roswell  Smith 

come  the  chairman,  he  accepted  the  position  of  secretary 
of  the  committee.  The  resolution  directed  the  committee 
"  to  make  a  thorough  examination  of  all  the  affairs  and 
business  of  the  society,"  and  as  executive  secretary  the 
burden  of  the  duty  and  responsibility  fell  upon  him,  though 
the  whole  was  shared  by  his  associates,  the  Hon.  Nathan- 
iel Shipman  (chairman).  General  Wager  Svvayne,  the  Rev. 
Talbot  W.  Chambers,  D.  D.,  Chancellor  MacCracken,  the 
Hon.  James  White,  and  Mr.  Robert  Colby. 

Their  report  was  thorough  and  comprehensive.  It  in- 
troduced vital  changes  in  the  constitution  and  methods 
of  the  society.  Though  not  inerrant,  after  consideration 
and  full  discussion  in  two  public  meetings  it  was  in  the 
end  adopted,  June  i,  1887,  with  (evf  if  any  dissenting 
voices.  The  five  subsequent  years  of  practical  working 
have  attested  in  the  main  the  wisdom  of  the  changes  then 
made.  At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  same  year  Roswell 
Smith  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Finance  and  Executive 
committees,  in  which  he  continued  by  succeeding  elec- 
tions until  his  decease. 

His  peculiar  gifts  as  a  publisher,  which  placed  him 
easily  in  the  front  rank  of  the  men  in  that  sphere,  added 
to  his  desire  to  make  the  most  of  his  life  for  the  Lord,  and 
for  his  fellow-men  for  Christ's  sake,  were  the  prime  ele- 
ments in  the  quickening  which  occurred  about  1887.  The 
opportunity  now  brought  to  him  to  put  his  hand  to  the 
execution  of  the  plans  which  he  had  desired  and  the  so- 
ciety had  adopted,  came  to  him  as  a  providential  call  to 
service,  and,  if  need  be,  to  sacrifice;  and  thenceforth, 
whatever  were  the  enactments  of  his  own  extensive  busi- 
ness, his  time  was  freely  given  to  the  interests  of  the  society. 

55 


Roswell  Smith 

His  practical  knowledge  of  the  publishing  business,  fertil- 
ity of  suggestion,  sound  judgment,  and  large  acquaintance 
with  and  love  for  missionary  effort,  made  him  a  most  help- 
ful member  of  the  committee/ 

He  was  a  truly  catholic  Christian.  One  of  his  cher- 
ished purposes,  to  which  he  gave  much  thought  and 
personal  work,  was  a  plan  for  close  co5peration,  or  even 
a  union  on  some  general  basis,  between  all  the  great 
American  undenominational  publishing  societies.  But 
serious  illness  overtook  him,  and  of  necessity  he  was 
constrained  to  remove  his  hand  from  what  he  hoped 
would  be  the  means  of  furthering  and  demonstrating  the 
unity  of  all  evangelical  Christians. 

As  weariness  and  weakness  in  the  past  two  years 
stealthily  crept  over  him,  from  time  to  time  he  recalled 
with  peculiar  delight  his  association  with  the  men  whom 
he  esteemed  and  loved  as  members  of  the  committee, 
and  his  satisfaction  in  the  retrospect  of  his  work  in  con- 
nection with  the  society.  It  is  almost  needless  to  add 
that  this  view  is  most  cordially  reciprocated  by  the  offi- 
cers and  members  of  the  American  Tract  Society,  to 
which  his  decease  is  an  irreparable  loss. 

(Rev.)  G.  L.  Shearer, 
Financial  Secretary  of  the  American  Tract  Society. 

For  six  years  Roswell  Smith  was  the  honored  president 
of  the  Congregational  Club  of  New  York  and  vicinity. 
For  most  of  that  time  he  was  a  member  of  the  Memorial 
Presbyterian  Church,  but  his  membership  in  that  church 
was  determined  by  his  personal  relations  with  its  pastor, 
the  Rev.  Charles  S.  Robinson,  D.  D.     His  sympathies 

56 


Roswell  Smith 

were  heartily  with  the  Congregational  churches,  and  his 
gifts  for  benevolent  work  chiefly  through  their  missionary 
boards.  Soon  after  the  organization  of  the  club  he  was 
elected  to  its  membership,  and  in  1883  was  chosen  presi- 
dent. The  outlook  of  the  club  at  that  time  was  not 
promising.  No  permanent  and  desirable  place  for  its 
meetings  had  been  found,  and  that,  with  other  facts,  had 
discouraged  many  of  its  members.  When  Mr.  Roswell 
Smith  assumed  its  presidency  a  new  and  brighter  era 
began.  He  brought  to  the  office  large  practical  wisdom, 
wide  knowledge  of  men,  and  exceptional  opportunities 
for  securing  speakers.  From  the  beginning  of  his  admin- 
istration to  its  end  the  Congregational  Club  offered  the 
best  program  of  any  club  in  New  York  the  primary  object 
of  which  was  the  discussion  of  topics  of  current  interest. 
The  platform  was  always  free;  speakers  were  encouraged 
to  give  their  honest  thought,  and  were  not  asked  whether 
it  coincided  \vith  the  views  of  the  president  or  member- 
ship. One  subject  in  particular  had  an  especial  interest 
for  our  president.  Some  time  before  his  election  the  fol- 
lowing question  had  been  discussed,  "  Is  it  possible  to  do 
business  on  Christian  principles?"  A  very  prominent 
banker,  who  was  also  a  prominent  church  member,  main- 
tained that  Christian  principles  were  one  thing  and  busi- 
ness principles  another.  I  have  never  seen  Mr.  Roswell 
Smith  more  indignant  than  when  referring  to  that  discus- 
sion, and  he  was  not  satisfied  until  it  had  been  considered 
again,  and  he  had  borne  emphatic  testimony  to  his  faith 
that  the  only  way  in  which  business  can  be  conducted 
with  prospect  of  permanent  success  is  by  a  strict  adher- 
ence to  the  teachings  of  Christ. 

9  57 


Roswell  Smith 

The  publisher  of  **  The  Century,"  of  course,  had  un- 
equaled  facilities  for  securing  the  participation  of  eminent 
authors  and  public  speakers  in  the  discussions  of  the 
club,  and  few,  if  any,  persons  whose  names  were  promi- 
nent in  the  pages  of  "  The  Century  "  during  his  presi- 
dency of  the  club  failed,  at  some  time,  to  appear  at  its 
meetings.  In  his  intercourse  with  its  members  Mr.  Ros- 
well Smith  was  always  the  urbane  Christian  gentleman ; 
in  his  conferences  with  its  officers  he  was  always  courteous 
and  considerate.  We  felt  that  he  gave  to  us  his  best 
thought,  and  the  club  had  unquestionable  evidence  that 
while  it  honored  itself  by  choosing  him  as  its  president, 
it  always  had  a  large  place  in  his  heart.  In  1889  failing 
health  compelled  him  to  decline  reelection  to  the  office, 
and  while  he  has  seldom  been  seen  at  the  club  since  that 
time,  his  name  has  often  been  mentioned  with  sincere 
and  reverent  regard ;  and  in  no  organization  of  which  he 
was  a  member  will  his  memory  be  more  fondly  cherished 
and  his  loss  more  deeply  mourned.  In  all  the  years  of 
his  connection  with  the  Congregational  Club,  during 
most  of  which  he  was  its  president,  its  members  will 
recall  not  a  single  act  or  word  that  was  not  courteous 
and  Christian,  and  its  present  conspicuous  success  is  uni- 
versally regarded  as  very  largely  due  to  his  wisdom  and 
devotion  to  its  interests. 

(Rev.)  Amory  H.  Bradford. 

Mr,  Roswell  Smith's  first  gift  [to  Berea  College],  one 
thousand  dollars,  was  sent  through  the  American  Mis- 
sionary Association  in  1884  for  our  current  expenses.  In 
June  of  the  following  year  he,  with  George  W.  Cable, 

58 


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O 

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o 


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n 
o 


o 

m 


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O 
O 

o 

> 
z 


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'         4. 


h  -^-^ 


^,^^==^.  ^!/  te^k^--- 


Roswell  Smith 

attended  our  commencement.  He  saw  our  urgent  need 
of  a  suitable  building  for  class-rooms,  library,  etc.,  and  re- 
marked that  we  should  begin  making  bricks.  One  of  our 
workers  mentioned  the  difficulty  of  making  bricks  with- 
out straw.  Mr.  Roswell  Smith  at  once  replied,  "  Put  me 
down  for  five  thousand  for  straw."  We  began  making 
bricks  that  summer,  and  in  the  end  he  put  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  into  a  new  building  for  us.  One  of  the 
most  characteristic  letters  from  the  large  correspondence 
had  during  the  progress  of  the  building  was  written  Jan- 
uary 7,  1887,  in  which  he  says,  "  I  hope  the  college  will 
get  on  without  calling  on  me  for  more  money,  bid  I  shall 
be  ready  to  respond  to  calls  as  fast  as  may  be  neces- 
sary to  keep  the  work  in  progress,  and  I  wish  you  to  call 
on  me  freely  for  that  end." 

When  the  building  was  nearly  completed  we  asked  him 
to  christen  it.  He  wrote  to  call  it  "  Lincoln  Hall,"  in 
memory  of  the  poor  white  boy  of  Kentucky  who  had  won 
the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  and  the  highest  honors  they 
could  give. 

After  we  had  been  in  the  building  a  few  months,  the 
following  letter  was  received  : 

New  York,  Nov.  24,  '87. 

My  Dear  Mr.  Dodge:  I  am  glad  to  know  that  the  building  — 
Lincoln  Hall  —  meets  your  needs  and  gives  you  so  much  pleasure. 
I  have  a  picture  of  it  in  my  office,  and  it  certainly  gives  me  more 
pleasure  at  present  than  my  new  house,  which  I  am  trying  so  hard 
to  get  into,  and  can't. 

I  have  written  to  Mr.  Hartley  about  the  bas-relief  of  Lincoln,  and 
shall  doubtless  be  able  to  advise  you  in  that  matter  within  a  few 
days.  I  am  very  sincerely  yours, 

Roswell  Smith. 

59 


Roswell  Smith 

Mr.  Roswell  Smith  wished  a  bas-relief  of  Lincoln  to  be 
placed  in  the  vestibule  of  Lincoln  Hall.  His  next  letter 
was  in  reference  to  that,  and  is  as  follows : 

New  York,  Nov.  29,  '87. 
My  Dear  Mr.  Dodge  :  I  have  purchased  from  Mr.  J.  S.  Hart- 
ley a  bronze  cast  of  the  Lincoln  head,  duly  framed,  and  suitable  for 
hanging  up  indoors  in  Lincoln  Hall.  ...   I  hope  it  will  reach  you 
before  Christmas. 

Will  you  kindly  thank  Mr.  E.  H.  Fairchild  for  his  letter  of 
Thanksgiving  Day,  and  tell  him  that  he  is  unduly  alarmed  as  to  my 
health?  As  Mr.  Lowell  said  yesterday, in  his  address  on  Copyright, 
"  We  are  all  of  us,  always,  just  beginning  to  live." 

I  am  very  sincerely  yours, 

Roswell  Smith. 

Besides  the  new  building,  we  received  from  him  four 
thousand  dollars  for  current  expenses.  His  last  gift  and 
last  letter  came  after  the  exciting  political  campaign  of 

four  years  ago  : 

New  York,  Dec.  31,  '88. 
My  Dear  Fellow-worker  for  Christ  :  I  wish  you  a  Happy 
New  Year,  and  I  send  you  a  thousand  dollars  for  your  work,  which 
please  use  (after  consulting  Pres.  Fairchild)  "  Where  it  will  do  the 
most  good,"  as  the  pohticians  say,  and  may  the  Divine  Master's 
blessing  go  with  and  attend  its  use. 

I  am  yours  sincerely, 

Roswell  Smith. 

Our  sympathies  are  with  the  family  and  friends  of  this 
good  man.  Very  truly  yours, 

P.  D.  Dodge, 
Secretary  and  Treasurer. 

Berea  College,  Ky.,  April  21,  1892. 

60 


Roswell  Smitb 

There  was,  if  I  may  judge  correctly,  something  states- 
manlike in  his  conduct  of  the  business  interests  of  which 
he  was  at  the  head,  while  there  was  also  something  ro- 
mantic in  his  feeling  about  them.  To  his  mind  The 
Century  Co.  was  not  a  concern  for  making  money,  but 
an  organization  for  the  advancement  of  civilization,  .  .  . 
This  was  the  spirit  in  which  he  conceived  and  carried  on 
the  work  of  his  life.  And  it  imparted  itself  to  those  who 
were  associated  with  him.  He  was  justly  proud  of  their 
friendship,  confidence,  and  loyalty,  and  they  in  turn  bear 
testimony  to  the  inspiration  of  his  stimulating  leadership. 
The  many  volumes  which  have  been  brought  out  by  the 
company  of  which  he  was  the  president  are  in  one  sense 
a  monument  to  him ;  but  the  influence  of  his  strong 
personality  on  the  minds  and  characters  of  those  who, 
through  these  years,  have  been  working  with  him,  will 
doubtless  continue  when  all  these  volumes  shall  have 
ceased  to  be  read.     .     .     . 

It  is  not  only  in  the  offices  where  he  will  be  no  more 
seen  that  he  will  be  gratefully  remembered.  .  .  .  He  bore 
his  part  of  the  work  of  some  of  the  most  important  of  the 
benevolent  societies  of  the  church.  .  .  .  The  shadows  of 
death  have  been  gathering  around  him  for  many  months, 
and  he  entered  into  them  bravely,  patiently,  without  a 
murmur.  And  now,  out  of  the  unwearied  and  loving 
ministries  which  attended  him  to  the  last  moment,  he 
has  passed  to  the  freedom  and  the  peace  of  that  larger 
life  on  which  no  shadows  fall.  .  .  . 

Rev.  Dr.  Edward  B.  Coe. 

(Funeral  Address.) 


6i 


Roswell  Smith 

Here  where  I,  sitting  in  my  place, 
So  oft  have  seen  you  at  the  door, 

A  lad  comes  with  indifferent  face 
To  tell  me  we  shall  meet  no  more. 

The  Old  World  pity  of  slow  ships 
Was  kinder  than  this  flashing  speed ; 

The  first  short  sigh  on  Western  lips  — 
I  hear  it  plainlier  than  I  need. 

The  paper  flutters  to  the  ground. 

Cold  wastes  of  ocean  scarcely  part 
Your  voiceless  mouth  that  makes  no  sound, 

And  silence  of  my  beating  heart. 

In  this  first  hour,  while  thought  is  blank, 
I  dwell  on  all  that  made  you  dear ; 

And  for  the  gracious  past  I  thank 
Whatever  now  can  feel  or  hear. 

The  gentle  mode,  so  subtly  leagued 
With  moral  power  and  mental  health, 

The  courteous  patience  unfatigued, 
The  cordial  wish  to  please  by  stealth ! 

That  lifelong  flame  which  rose  and  fell 
By  purest  purpose  still  was  fanned ; 

That  stringent  will  which  planned  so  well  — 
For  others,  not  for  self,  it  planned. 

62 


Roswell  Smith 

Vain,  vain  are  words!  I  sit  alone 
And  helpless  sorrow  westward  send. 

Roar  louder,  London's  central  moan, 
My  world  is  poorer  by  a  friend. 

Edmund  Gosse. 
London,  April  20,  1892. 


As  I  complete  the  hurried  grouping  of  these 
testimonials,  I  am  moved  to  venture  a  word,  the 
briefest,  and  merely  for  emphasis,  on  four  or 
five  traits  in  the  character  of  Roswell  Smith, 
which  seem,  in  the  moment  of  tribute-offering, 
to  have  been  eclipsed  by  the  luster  of  more 
imposing  qualities. 

And  first,  the  almost  poignant  longing  with 
which  he  clung  to  the  days  of  best  strength 
as  they  glided  relentlessly  through  his  grasp. 
He  was  as  much  too  wise  to  be  avaricious  of 
time  as  he  was  too  noble  to  be  so  of  money; 
and  yet  he  yearned  toward  every  parting  hour. 
How  often  did  he  say  to  intimates  younger 
than  himself,  "  You  think  you  know  the  value 
of  time  ;  but  you  do  not  —  no  young  man  can." 

In  the  years  of  his  great  achievements  he 
was  hale,  well  knit,  broad  of  frame,  strong  in 
features,    and    of   majestic    yet    most   inviting 

63 


Roswell  Smith 

presence ;  "  a  remarkably  fine-looking  man, 
and  the  very  embodiment  of  energy  and  intel- 
ligence." I  never  saw  in  him  the  most  cov- 
ert sign  of  personal  vanity,  or  saw  him  resort 
to  the  most  momentary  expedient  to  deceive 
himself  or  others  as  to  his  advancing  years. 
And  yet  it  was  touching  to  observe  the  silent, 
or  nearly  silent,  intensity  with  which  he  craved 
departing  youth.  Oftenest  it  betrayed  itself 
in  a  certain  robust  sadness  with  which  he  laid 
upon  some  younger  friend  the  tender  accusa- 
tion, "  You,  too,  are  getting  old." 

I  might  give  a  trivial  incident  that  illustrates 
both  this  and  the  manly  purity  of  his  mind.  A 
companion,  his  junior,  said  laughingly,  as  they 
parted  with  some  fair  young  friends  after  a 
moment's  greeting,  he  had  made  the  sad  dis- 
covery that  he  had  arrived  at  the  stage  of  life 
where  girls  were  no  longer  afraid  of  him.  Ros- 
well Smith's  answering  smile  was  faint,  grave, 
and  soon  gone  as  he  said,  "You  've  another 
stage  to  reach,  and  a  sadder  discovery  to  make 
— the  day  you  find  you  're  no  longer  afraid  of 
the  girls." 

Probably  the  explanation  of  this  trait  is  that 
almost  with  the  first  of  the  series  of  his  great 

64 


Roswell  Smith 

successes  there  set  in  a  slow,  and  for  a  long  time 
very  slight,  but  steady  and  conscious  decline 
of  his  physical  powers,  which  followed  his  every 
step,  an  ever-darkening  shadow.  He  did  not 
take  age  unkindly,  but  he  took  death,  when  at 
length  he  plainly  saw  it  approaching,  kindlier 
than  he  could  take  the  thought  of  an  enfeebled 
age.  He  was  so  invincibly  bent  on  keeping  his 
spiritual  life  whole  that  a  flaw  in  his  physical 
perfections  was  to  him  as  the  fall  of  some  out- 
post in  his  soul's  defenses. 

This  leads  me  to  note,  as  a  second  trait,  his 
moral  indignation.  Among  all  the  soul's  arma- 
ment no  other  one  thing,  I  take  it,  is  so  effective, 
so  needful,  or  so  rare,  as  a  strong,  quick,  aggres- 
sive, and  even  implacable  indignation  against 
the  remotest  approach  of  temptation,  the  first 
apparition  of  evil.  It  is  our  moral  nature's  long- 
range  artillery,  and  holds  the  soul's  enemies  be- 
yond besieging  distance.  Roswell  Smith  was  of 
so  tender  a  sentiment,  and  so  believed  in  tender- 
ness, that  he  could  hardly  tell  a  touching  inci- 
dent without  his  eyes  filling  with  tears  and  his 
voice  faltering.  Yet  to  the  author  of  an  ignoble 
proposition  or  an  unfair  deed  he  could  be  as  rude 
as  a  thunder-cloud.     He  was  patient  with  error, 

lo  65 


Roswell  Smith 

even  when  it  arose  from  the  most  criminal  weak- 
ness or  from  the  grossest  moral  deformity.  He 
could  forgive  and  forbear  with  the  largeness  with 
which  he  did  all  things;  but  with  men  of  stal- 
wart immorality  he  would  have  no  relations,  no 
dealings,  whatever,  social,  civil,  or  commercial. 
I  would  note,  too,  the  great  depth  of  his  feel- 
ings. To  conceive  largely,  to  execute  largely  — 
it  may  be  that  with  such  gifts  must  go  always 
also  the  capacity  to  enjoy  and  suffer  in  like 
measure.  A  ready  anger,  even  when  readiest 
against  evil,  may  come  of  a  lack  of  depth ;  a 
constant  cheerfulness  may  arise  from  a  spirit  that 
will  not,  or  can  not,  carry  grief's  burdens.  But 
Roswell  Smith's  affections, —  his  friendships  and 
loves, — though  rarely  demonstrative,  and  almost 
barren  of  caresses,  were  deep  seas ;  his  sorrows 
were  agonies.  He  could  smite,  for  the  rights  of 
others  and  even  for  his  own, —  though  these  he 
often  waived, —  with  stern  prowess.  Indeed,  al- 
most every  period  of  his  life  was  marked  by 
some  such  struggle.  But  every  blow  that  fell 
upon  him  left  an  inward  wound,  and  every  blow 
that  he  struck  cost  him  deeper  pain  than  it  cost 
any  adversary.  There  is  no  room  to  doubt  that 
his  griefs,  and  particularly  the  griefs  that  all  strifes 

66 


Roswell  Smith 

cost  him,  made  his  life  shorter  than  it  need  have 
been.  But  maybe  a  hte  so  broad  and  deep 
could  the  better  afford  to  end  so  far  short  as  it 
did  of  threescore  and  ten. 

One  day,  a  few  years  ago, —  and  this  incident 
brings  again  to  mind  his  yearning  after  spent, 
although  such  well  spent,  years, —  The  Century 
offices  took  fire.  The  fire  was  checked  without 
having  destroyed  the  rooms,  but  not  until  the 
letter-books  of  the  president,  though  not  de- 
stroyed, had  yielded  to  some  chemistry  of  fire, 
water,  or  both,  and  the  entire  record  of  his  years 
of  correspondence  was  obliterated.  His  sorrow 
for  these  lost  letters  was  of  a  depth  and  poi- 
gnancy as  great  as  if  they  had  been  children. 
Yet  he  never  let  a  darkened  mood  cast  from 
him  its  shadow  upon  the  spirits  of  others,  and 
no  sorrow  or  despondency  ever  disennobled 
him,  or  made  him  less  a  Christian  or  less  a  man. 

We  say  his  loves  were  deep  seas :  their  deep- 
est deep  —  and  this  is  the  last  trait  of  his  char- 
acter to  which  we  shall  refer  —  was  his  love  ot 
family  and  kindred.  For  it  he  had  few  words 
and  almost  no  gestures;  it  really  was  wanting 
in  emotional  demonstration.  And  still  it  was  as 
real,  as  obvious,  as  constant,  as   seemingly  an 

67 


Roswell  Smith 

essential  part  of  his  existence,  as  his  breath.  To 
those  whom  God  had  joined  to  him  he  no  more 
needed  to  say,  "  I  love,"  than,  "  I  live."  It  was 
all  one;  they  were  a  part  of  him,  he  of  them, 
like  members  of  one  body;  and  he  was  forever 
doing,  doing,  doing  for  them  as  if,  of  that  body, 
he  were — as  he  was  —  the  heart.  Yet,  again, 
his  love,  for  all  its  pent  fondness,  never  took 
form  to  belittle;  it  always  sought  to  aggrandize 
spiritually  as  well  as  materially  those  whom  it 
rested  on,  and  there  was  ever  present  in  his 
mind  a  silent  punctiliousness  as  to  the  moral 
effect  of  every  favor,  however  lavishly  bestowed. 
Having  at  one  time  decided  to  make,  gradu- 
ally, to  one  of  his  nearest,  a  gift  equal  in  total 
value  to  an  independent  fortune,  he  took  pains 
to  have  its  price  paid  step  by  step,  month  by 
month,  thousand  after  thousand  until  they  were 
tens  and  scores,  by  another's  cheque ;  never  by 
his  own. 

His  widow,  his  daughter,  and  he  whom  he 
made  so  much  more  son  than  son-in-law — these 
cannot  forget  the  riches  of  his  love  and  worth. 
His  young  grandchildren  can  know  its  full  mea- 
sure only  from  their  seniors ;  how  perpetually  they 
dwelt  in  his  mind  and  heart;  how  fondly — with 

68 


Roswell  Sini'fb 

what  hope  and  devotion — he  studied  their  every 
feature  of  face,  form,  and  character  through  every 
new  day  of  their  unfolding  growth.  May  his 
memory  be  to  them,  and  to  us  all  who  knew  him, 
a  power  to  make  our  lives  the  more  nearly  after 
the  likeness  shown  by  his  Master  to  him. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
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